OHIP-Funded Functional Headache Management Group Counselling

Many chronic headache patients find that the traditional medical approach – that is, assigning patients to a diagnosis and then matching them up the the treatment associated with that diagnosis – has not given them satisfactory results. In fact, despite how widespread this traditional approach is, headache remains the second leading cause of disability internationally. 

Rather than aiming for the elusive hole-in-one (i.e., medicine, mantras and anything in between) that sees the headache pain – and all the associated social and psychological consequences – go away, the functional model aims to diversify your playbook in how you approach the many facets of your current lives. There are so many variables that are involved in the headache experience, and all of these factors create cause-and-effect relationships with the headache. Identifying these feedback loops and reprogramming the way you navigate them is the crux of the functional model of chronic headache management.