NDPH
Free tool
MIDAS disability score.
The Migraine Disability Assessment asks how many days headaches cost you over the last three months. Neurologists use the score and grade to judge how disabling a headache is and whether treatment is working.32
Over the last 3 months, on how many days…
Enter a number of days (0–90) for each. Questions 2 and 4 exclude the days you already counted in 1 and 3.
Context (not scored)
What the grades mean
- Grade I (0–5): little or no disability
- Grade II (6–10): mild disability
- Grade III (11–20): moderate disability
- Grade IV (21 or more): severe disability
MIDAS was developed and validated in migraine.32 It still works as a measure of disability in other headaches, but it has a blind spot for daily, continuous pain: someone with NDPH can lose a great deal of their life without missing a single whole day. If that is you, the two context questions — headache days and average pain — matter as much as the score, so write them down too.
The score is most useful as a trend. Take it before starting a new treatment and again three months later. The app keeps a history of your MIDAS scores and puts the latest one in the report for your neurologist.
References
Numbers in the text link to these sources. Where the evidence comes from migraine rather than NDPH, the text says so.
- Stewart WF, Lipton RB, Dowson AJ, Sawyer J. Development and testing of the Migraine Disability Assessment (MIDAS) Questionnaire to assess headache-related disability. Neurology 2001;56(Suppl 1):S20-8. doi.org/10.1212/wnl.56.suppl_1.s20