effectiveness of behavior management intervention in migraine with a focus on comorbid depressive

Background: migraine negatively affects sufferers’ physical and mental health and social and economic status. objectives: this study compared the effectiveness of behavior management therapy and pharmacotherapy in reducing migraine-related disabilities with and without focusing on comorbid depressive symptoms. materials & methods: this quasi-experimental study has a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. the study was conducted on migrainous patients with comorbid depressive symptoms referred to neurology clinics in rasht city, iran, in 2021. a total of 18 female patients were selected using purposive sampling based on neurological diagnosis and the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm-5) criteria for depressive disorder. the participants were randomly assigned to two groups after matching regarding age and severity of depression. combined therapy (behavior management intervention [bm] and pharmacotherapy [p]) was performed in two groups during eight sessions, with (case group) and without (control group) focusing on comorbid depressive symptoms. the data were collected using the beck depression inventory (bdi-ii), the headache disability inventory (hdi), and the headache diary (hd) and analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance. results: the first therapeutic approach was significantly superior to the second in reducing migraine-related disabilities (f(2, 13)=10.43, p<0.05 , wilks lambda=0.384, partial ƞ² =0.616). conclusion: combined therapy (bm & p) focusing on comorbid depressive symptoms can be an alternative or complementary therapeutic method to reduce various disabilities in migraine patients.