I was diagnosed with depression associated with chronic pain, but the fact is migraines play a significant role in this. Migraines can dramatically affect my mood. Significantly when the migraine is a status migraine and lasts for three days to, well, way too long. I have had suicidal ideation. Suicidal attempts. The depression itself can rise and fall like a storm, much like the migraines itself. And powerful. However, due to the chronic nature of my migraines it also became a force in-in-itself. More powerful in times of high pain, but there regardless.
It was ignored for years and I wrote a post about why here. Point is after a second suicide attempt the pain clinic rather thought the depression itself needed to be paid some attention to. When I first when to them they thought it could be managed with just some support from the psychologist who specialized in chronic pain, because the depression was a beast of the chronic pain. In a way, that was true but the intensity of the depression when I was in high amounts of pain and sleep deprived was extremely difficult to get around the excessively dark thoughts. Since I already in the past had a suicide attempt my second one was very spontaneous. I had already crossed that mental barrier and knew how easy it was to cross… so just leap right on by it the second time with little thought or consideration. Pain has a way of influencing thoughts to be deeper and darker. Not, unfortunately, unrealistic… just sharper and more exemplified of reality. Nothing gentle can sneak in there. Therefore they decided I needed to temper the storm with medication. Here is the irony; antidepressants make me suicidal. In fact that was the contributing factor to my suicide attempts, the medications, that made suicidal thoughts aggressive and persistent. Therefore when they looked at my medication choices the pain clinic psychiatrist said I can never be put on that class for pain management again, let alone depression. There were two alternatives and I am on Abilify. It actually works well. I have depression still, especially with a wicked migraine hitting hard. I just don’t really have the extreme lows that I was used to. The freaky scary lows.
Depression is an insidious beast that affects my chronic migraine treatment in so many ways. I was not as involved in my general self-care. I lacked the motivation to do anything let alone the exercise I was supposed to do. I didn’t care about my hobbies and the things I used to enjoy anymore. I just wanted to sleep. I’d miss work from the migraines but also because I didn’t want to move, exist, be in pain that day. I am still in what I call a ‘funk’ still trying to encourage my motivation, force myself to engage in self-care. Trying to work on my hobbies hoping to spur my creativity again.
Another thing about depression is the lack of hope. When I feel a bit better I try. I try all the things on my pain management list and I do them every day. Set a routine. But when the depression sinks into me lower. I don’t try. Because why does it even matter? Nothing is going to work. And my routine falls apart. I have yet to find a way to keep my routine through the dips of the depression.
Here is some research to look at for migraines and depression.
Psychiatric Comorbidity in Chronic Daily Headache research states people who have chronic pain do not get as depressed as often as people with chronic migraines. So there must be a link or correlation to explain why this is so.
Migraine and psychiatric comorbidity: a review of clinical findings research points to the fact migraine with aura migraineurs are more likely to have depression than those without aura.
Migraine and depression The association with depression is high with migraine with aura and in chronic migraines. They suggest migraine patients are carefully screened for depression.
For more than a century, clinicians and researchers alikehave noted the possible relationship between migraine and
different psychological characteristics, including tenden-cies toward depression, perfectionism and repressedaggression. With few exceptions, the previous investiga-tions have been highly consistent in reporting an increasedprevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) in patientswith migraine. The discrepant studies were characterisedby several methodological differences or limitations thatmay explain the lack of association with MDD. Theseinclude the fact that the sample was not representative ofthe general population or of clinic settings and the cohortstudied was notably younger and had a different sex com-position than the other published investigations
In a population of subjects aged over 65 years, Wang etal. found that the risk of current depression was muchgreater in migraine sufferers than in non-migraine patients[12]. Merikangas et al. investigated 457 younger subjectsand found an increased risk of developing major depres-sion and anxiety disorders in migraine patients comparedwith controls [13]. Lipton, in a population-based case-con-trol study conducted in a community setting, confirmed ahigher risk of current depression among patients sufferingfrom migraine [3].
In another paper, Breslau reported that a history ofmigraine is associated with increased frequencies of suici-dal ideation and suicide attempts in patients with majordepression [28]. In the study of Fasmer and Oedegaard, thefrequency of suicide attempts was higher among thepatients having MWA than in patients affected by migraineaura without headache (MAWH). This was despite the factthat the frequency of suicidal thoughts was approximatelyequal in the two groups [29]. In a recent study of 201patients with MDD, the authors compared MWA andMAWH. They observed that the MAWH group had a sig-nificantly lower prevalence of affective temperaments andsuicide attempts [30]. Zwart et al., in a large cross-sec-tional population-based study, observed that the OR fordepression was significantly higher in subjects withmigraine and non-migraine headache compared to theheadache-free group. Moreover, there was a strong lineartrend of higher prevalence of depression with increasingheadache frequency [31]
They found that migraineurs had a more thanthree-fold relative risk of developing depression comparedwith non-migraine patients; in turn, depression patientsthat had not previously suffered from migraine had a morethan three-fold relative risk of developing migraine com-pared with non-depressed patients. The association seemsto arise from the two conditions reciprocally affecting eachother in a “bidirectional” relationship rather than resultingfrom a one-way action, thus ruling out the possibility thatmood disturbances may be secondary to repeated migraineattacks [34].There is evidence for involvement of both monoamine(serotonin and dopamine) and peptide (endorphin andencephalin) neurotransmitters in depression. Endorphinsand encephalins are involved in both mood and pain con-trol. Serotonin (5HT) in particular has been implicated inmood disorders, anxiety disorders, sleep disorders, eatingdisorders, obsessive–compulsive disorder, migraine andTTH. There is good evidence for the involvement of 5 HT1receptor [36, 37]. Evidence is accumulating that dopamineis also intimately involved in migraine. Migraine prodromeis often characterised by dopaminergic symptoms and anti-dopaminergic compounds can often be helpful in treatment[38]. According to these data, it can be hypothesised thatsevere headache, severe somatic symptoms and majordepression may be linked through dysfunction of the sero-toninergic and dopaminergic systems