Discussion
headaches, headache
CHRONIC HEADACHES
The CHESS intervention was delivered as planned with good levels of fidelity consistent with similar interventions [The opportunity to meet and have discussions with others who had a similar condition was valued by almost every study participant interviewed. Intervention group sessions were perceived as informative, but few people reported making changes to how they managed their headaches because of specific content. Most study participants had previous experience of keeping a headache diary. Although most participants valued the opportunity to discuss their medication in the one-to-one session with a nurse, only a few went on to discuss their medication with their GPs. Few participants interviewed for the process evaluation spoke of goal setting and none reported having achieved their goals. Twelve months after the intervention, participants reported little change to their headache management. There was little evidence to suggest that the causal assumptions for our intervention were realised within the time frame of our study.Chronic headache is a condition that becomes embedded in all aspects of life. Our own systematic review completed in the early stages of this study, found that headache is a driver of behaviour, affects people’s relationships and is an ever present ‘spectre’ over their lives [