Headaches in school children

Headaches are found to be common among schoolchildren who are found to be afflicted by it increasingly. Recent research has found that noisy classrooms and tough academic subjects can literally be a real headache for kids.
Researchers from the Royal College of General Practitioners analysed children's descriptions of their headaches and their thoughts about them. It was being assumed that children have insight into the conditions that affect their health. Fourteen children aged between ten and 12 years, who had gone to the school nurse more than once during the previous two-month period complaining of a headache, took part in thematically structured interviews. Qualitative analysis was performed, aimed at identifying the basic themes involved.  The children were found to consistently associate their headaches with conditions in school, specifically with more theoretically-oriented subjects for example maths, a noisy and disorderly school environment, and insecure relations with classmates. The second theme they took up was insecurity or conflict within the family. Reports of this constituted a major part of the children's accounts of their life situation, despite their failing to link such matters with their headaches. Many of the children considered their patterns of reacting, such as feeling unable to cope or becoming angry, as contributing to their getting headaches. The researchers reported that the children consistently linked their headaches with conditions in school.  The results of the study explain why physicians fail to make sense of children's headaches. They generally approach them from a purely biomedical perspective. The children related their headaches to everyday situations and to their relations with others. This highlights the need for broadening the consultation in terms of including personal and contextual factors.