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‘Didn’t understand my suffering’: When children get migraines
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Not just adults: Migraines can be just as painful for children as for adults. The French organization La Voix des Migraineux said that half of children with the condition get at least one episode per month, and that 78 percent have moderate to severe attacks. (Pexels/Andrea Piacquadio)
Studies have found that 5-15% of children suffer from chronic migraines, but the symptoms are often overlooked.
Maiwenn Colleaux was 14 when she first started getting migraines, and they immediately turned her life upside down.
"When I had an attack, I could no longer go out, my social life stopped, I couldn't go to school," said Maiwenn, who is now 18.
"Inevitably, you feel different to the other children, who didn't understand my suffering and thought I just had a simple headache," she told a press conference in France on Thursday.
Her story is one of many. Migraines affect between 5 and 15 percent of children according to international research, but the chronic condition is often overlooked or misdiagnosed.
Anne Donnet, a neurologist at France's Marseille University Hospital Timone, said that child migraines were "poorly understood and little discussed in the medical world".
In adults, migraines strike one in every five women and one in every 15 men.
