invisible wounds
By Lesley Reed
Collateral Damage
Many veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are returning from the front lines with headache disorders. A new NHF website is doing its part to combat this growing problem.
AS MILITARY VETERANS RETURN from multiple tours in the Middle East, many are coming home with more than they bargained for. Research has shown that headaches often occur in tandem with conditions that commonly affect war veterans, such as post-traumatic stress disorder( PTSD), traumatic brain injury( TBI) and depression. With more than 1.6 million soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, this relationship has been attracting increased public scrutiny and concern.
In a study published in the June 2008 edition of the journal Headache, U. S. soldiers were screened within 90 days of returning from a one-year combat tour in Iraq. Of these soldiers, 19 % were found to have migraine, with an additional 17 % suspected of having migraine. By comparison, the prevalence of migraine in the general population is approximately 10 %.
A 2009 study from the Veterans Affairs Center of Excellence for Stress and Mental Health in La Jolla, Calif., found that both migraine and tension-type headache were significantly associated with PTSD and combat-related injury. Of the 308 veterans who visited the clinic for health services during the study, about 40 % reported migraine and / or tension-type headache as a current problem.
“ Veterans with PTSD were four times more likely to report current headache than veterans without PTSD symptoms,” says study lead Niloofar Afari, PhD, director of clinical affairs at the center.“ Veterans with both migraine and tension-type headache had significantly higher rates of PTSD than those who had migraine or tension-type headache alone.”
The study also found that veterans with combat injuries unrelated to TBI were more than twice as likely to report a headache. It did not, however, find a significant increase in headaches in veterans with TBI, which runs contrary to other studies. Dr. Afari speculates that this may be because so few subjects reported having TBI without combat injury.
Another surprising find was that veterans with substance abuse problems were only half as likely to report having headaches, possibly because they are already self-medicating, Dr. Afari says.
22 HEAD WISE | Volume 1, Issue 1 • 2011