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Cognitive Approaches to the Treatment of Chronic Benign Headache: A Review and Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2009

Stephen Morley
Stephen Morley
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Leeds
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Extract

Psychological treatments of headache are becoming increasingly influenced by cognitive therapy. This paper addresses three issues relevant to the development and evaluation of cognitive therapy. 1. It is argued that current assessment measures for evaluating treatment are founded on a theory of pain which is inadequate and as a result they are not sufficient for the evaluation of cognitive therapy. 2. The assumptions on which cognitive therapy for headache is based have not been verified. Recent research indicates a degree of complexity in the relationships between cognition, emotion and pain which has yet to be assimilated. 3. It is noted that cognitive therapy for headache lacks an explicit model of pain which would facilitate the precise formulation and testing of interventions.

Type
Special Issue: The Cognitive Revolution
Information
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , October 1986 , pp. 310 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies 1986

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