It is well known that the headache attacks starting at early ages have bad effects on the patient's both education and work capacity. This fact causes sociocultural and economic deficits on both individual and society. The aim of this study was to evaluate the pain and socioeconomical characteristics of migraine and tension type headaches which are the most frequent types of primary headaches.

Between March 1996 - Iuly 1996 1869 subjects who were selected using non-randomized clustered method from in three different socioeconomical districts of Istanbul were interviewed face to face. The subjects who answered positively to headache hidden in socioeconomical and general health problems questions in the first part of questionnaire were asked the characteristics of pain and work loss in the second part. The relationship between the characteristics of sociocultural structure and pain, the existance of work loss and the types of headache were evaluated. T-test, Spearmen correlation, Mann Whitney U test were used for statistical analysis.

Of the 1022 subjects with headache; 603 had type tension, 121 had migraine type headache. The daily activities of the patients with migranie type headache were affected extensively due to the severity of pain. The work loss was more prominent in both groups with frequent attacts of headache. There was a reverse correlation between education level and work loss in subjects with episodic tension type headache. There was not a relationship between the frequency of headache types and socioeconomical characteristics.

To conclude, contrary to clinical studies, the distribution and characteristics of headaches were not different socioeconomically from general population in epidemiologic studies. The headaches had bad effects on the economics of country effecting daily activity and raising health costs.