Date of Award

10-1-1995

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Migraines in women are often thought to be associated with their menstrual cycle, just as stress, appraisal, and coping are often thought to play an important role in the development and/or exacerbation of migraines. However, little is known about temporal aspects of these relationships. While a few studies have addressed the temporal issue with subsets of these variables, most studies have relied on global, retrospective assessments, rather than daily, longitudinal, prospective methods of measurement.The present study asked 20 women with migraines to monitor their headaches, stressful events, appraisal, coping, mood, and menstrual phase daily for two months. Each subject's data was then prewhitened with time series procedures before correlating each pair of variables for seven lags in both directions. Regression analysis examined the effects of the menstrual cycle on the other variables.Considerable between-subject variability was revealed for the correlations and the menstrual cycle regressions, but some commonalities existed between subjects. No variable significantly predicted another at any given lag for more than three subjects. However, one variable in a pair frequently predicted the other better than the reverse. For example, perceived stress predicted appraisal of coping resources and negative mood. Coping and appraisal of events as threatening also predicted mood. Perceived intensity of stressful events was the variable that predicted subsequent headache activity for the greatest number of subjects.Although in no case were a majority of subjects significantly affected by the menstrual cycle, in many instances a substantial subset was significantly affected (e.g., six subjects for stress and mood). Moreover, for the subjects significantly effected by the menstrual cycle, the amount of variance explained tended to be quite high (e.g., almost 50% for headache and appraisal for some subjects).

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