Discussion 1: Headaches

Think back to the last commercial or advertisement you saw for a headache reliever. Who was suffering from the headache? Most likely, that person was neither a child nor an adolescent. Often the media portrays adults with headaches, such as a mother struggling through her daily activities or a businessman working in the office late at night. Yet, headaches afflict children and adolescents at a high rate. Children and adolescents may experience many types of headaches, such as tension, migraine, mixed (tension and migraine), cluster, and sinus headaches. Some possible causes of these types of headaches include illness, lack of sleep, and watching television for long periods of time. Although children and adolescents experience headaches, adolescents tend to experience greater impacts. For many illnesses that affect adolescents, a non-medical treatment may be preferred. Psychologists and clinicians continue to search for non-medical treatments for adolescents that experience headaches.

For this Discussion, select a type of headache common to adolescents. Think about how that type of headache might impact various areas of an adolescent’s life and consider non-medical treatments that may be effective.

With these thoughts in mind:

Post by Day 3 a brief description of the type of headache you selected. Then explain possible impacts of this type of headache on adolescents’ educational experience, social functioning, and families. Finally, describe one type of non-medical treatment that might be recommended for adolescents experiencing the type of headache you selected and explain why that treatment might be effective. Support your responses with the Learning Resources and current literature.

Be sure to support your postings and responses with specific references to the Learning Resources.