In children with migraine, recurrent absenteeism, with its serious consequences on learning and socialization, can lead to dropping out of school or even giving up higher education, among other things.
However, the harmful consequences of this common neurological disease, on children and their future, are largely unknown. Finally, migraine is relatively poorly understood, and teachers and supervisors, including school nurses, often find themselves helpless.
This is why the association La Voix des Migraineux is launching a campaign to raise awareness about the schooling of children with migraines and recalls the existence of a legal system: the PAI (Individualized Reception Project) proposed by the National Education. This makes it possible to better organize the child’s life in the establishment by specifying their therapeutic needs.
8% of children are genuine migraine sufferers
The World Health Organization recognizes migraine as the second most disabling disease in the world. While it is finally beginning to be considered as a disease in its own right when it affects adults – it is mainly expressed between the ages of 20 and 50 – children are often forgotten, even though they are also affected by it and sometimes from a very young age.
A study estimates the prevalence of migraine among French children and adolescents at 8%. Another study estimates it at 9% among girls and 7% among boys globally.
Symptoms different from those of adults
The complex mechanisms of migraine are not fully understood. The brains of migraine sufferers appear to be hypersensitive to stimuli that are innocuous to people without migraine.
“ A brain genetically determined to be migraineur is a brain – precisely the hypothalamus which is the generator of attacks – very sensitive to changes (sleep, meals, emotions, pace of life, various activities, etc.), adds Professor Anne Donnet, neurologist at the Pain assessment and treatment center (Marseille University Hospital), particularly hormonal variations. »
The trap is that in children, migraine manifests itself with symptoms that are sometimes different from those of adults, such as paleness often preceding abdominal pain, headaches that are often severe, phonophobia (the sound is unbearable), photophobia ( light as well) and an aura in 30% of cases (blurred vision, flashes, tingling, language difficulties, weakness, numbness, etc.).
Another difference is that the average duration of a migraine attack is generally shorter in children than in adults (2 hours compared to 4 hours on average), and the pain is rather bilateral, affecting both temples or both parts. from the front simultaneously.
According to data from the Chronic Pain Center at Timone Hospital in Marseille, one child in two with migraine has more than one attack per month, and 78% of them experience moderate to fairly high attack intensity.
Furthermore, more than 40% experience nausea or vomiting during attacks, and more than a third experience abdominal pain.
The famous “liver crisis” is actually a migraine
Children can also present clinical pictures which do not result in a headache, specifies the French Society for the Study of Migraines & Headaches, but in the form of other symptoms also evolving into attacks: recurrent benign vertigo, repeated abdominal pain (“ abdominal migraine), cyclical vomiting, etc.
For all these forms of “migraine without headache”, the diagnosis of migraine will only be considered when the other causes of these symptoms have been eliminated. What we used to call “liver attacks” or “acetone attacks” are now considered real migraine attacks.
Migraine is not just a headache
La Voix des Migraineurs, which receives numerous testimonies from parents of children with migraines in distress, campaigns for the creation and validation of an Individualized Reception Project (PAI) specific to migraine. This “Migraine” type PAI would include the action to be taken in the event of a crisis (treatment of the crisis to be given, behaviors to adopt such as isolating the child in a calm and bright space and giving him something to drink, etc.) and would impose the adjustments necessary to limit triggering factors in the school and extra-curricular environment (canteen, daycare, study)
