This study aimed at investigating the relations among the psychological factors alexithymia, self-reflection, insight, depression, anxiety; demographic variables; and aspects of the impacts of the disorder on these patients' lives, such as severity of symptoms and quality of life in migraine sufferers as compared to a group of matched controls.
However, this lack of "purity" in the control group along with the significant difference of averages in all variables (alexithymia, self-reflection, insight, depression, anxiety and quality of life) reinforces the distinction between migraine sufferers and non-sufferers and the importance of the assessment of those variables in migraine patients.
For studies using QoL as the primary outcome measure it is worth bearing in mind that the inclusion of patients with low insight scores, low depression scores and high negative symptom scores will serve to increase the degree of discrepancy between patient-rated and assessor-rated QoL.
As in previous studies, for example, Narvaez et al. [ 11], good insight and depression predicted low patient-rated QoL [ 7, 8, 11, 12, 39- 46] but not assessor-rated QoL, driving the discrepancy between the two measures.
In empirical studies of this hypothesis, previous research has noted that the association of insight with depression [ 68], low quality of life [ 68], negative self-esteem [ 68, 69], hope [ 69], and social functioning [ 69] is moderated by self-stigma.
In addition, Pedrelli et al. did not find an association between cognitive insight and depression as measured by the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression in middle-aged and older patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder [ 34].
Previous work has highlighted the relationship between good insight and depression [ 47].
Furthermore, the relationships between cognitive insight and depression could be studied longitudinally.
Previous studies investigating the relationship between cognitive insight and depression have reported conflicting results.
To date, researchers have become increasingly interested in the relationship between cognitive insight and depression in individuals with psychotic disorders.
Our results replicate earlier findings [ 35, 37, 65] concerning the association between cognitive insight and depression in patients with schizophrenia.
