The pharmacological treatment of headache.

Often in the treatment of chronic headache, both physical and emotional factors are entailed. Therefore, the results of therapy are limited by the potentialities of the patient in therapy, the pharmacologic actions of the medications used, and the physician's interest and orientation toward the problem. The treatment of choice is generally a combination of psychotherapy and drug therapy. Results in a large series of tests with these types of headaches indicate the effectiveness of treatment is greatly influenced by the patient's psychological reaction to the treatment situation in general and in particular to having received a remedy from the physician. Patients with migraine did not respond to placebos as well as did patients with tension headache, post-traumatic headache and headache associated with hypertension.