11) Family members: siblings don’t always understand

- Even my brother, even if we get along well, breaks a lot [...] many times we are quiet in bed, he comes and pulls the pillows, very often they bother me. P19-F-17

- When I’m not well, [the headache makes me sick] as if I had a fever, yes, [my sister] understands me and she is kind. When headache is normal she doesn’t understand it, she increases it there. P10-M-14

12) At school: teachers who suffer from headaches understand me

- Teachers at school don’t understand anything, zero: “What are you doing, you have a headache only, where are you going?” I said: “I’m going home because I have a headache”. And Teacher: “What does it mean to go home because you have a headache?” P1-F-17

- At school I have two teachers who also suffer from headaches so one of them always tells me that when they get headaches, they tell me that they see everything blurred or dark moments. P4-F-17

13) Friends: they understand who suffers from headaches

- It happened with some classmates of mine, they joke about it, that is they are my friends but sometimes they joke about it. P4-F-17

- A friend of mine [also suffers from headache] and she also takes “Tachipirina” but we don’t often talk about what we feel when we have headaches. When she has pain, she stays with me and I tell her a lot and then it goes away, it’s nothing serious. P20-F-12

14) Headache perceived by other people: understimate

- In my opinion those who don’t have headache can’t understand, maybe they associate headache with a cold, many don’t understand it. P15-F-17

- I don’t think it’s such an important thing to tell the teachers, then maybe they underestimate it by saying “Yes but you have a headache” so I don’t tell them mainly because of that. P12-F-17

15) Impact on social activities Missed experiences: I don’t go out in pain/I go out anyway, grit my teeth…

- For example [when I go] to the disco with my friends, I don’t go there if I have a headache, I did it once and then I got sick, that’s it. P4-F-17

- [it happened] rarely that I didn’t go out at all, because I like to go out anyway, so despite the pain, I’d rather mix medicine first. If we go to bars or dance, I go dancing with a headache. P1-F-17

Causality

16) School-related stress

- Very often due to a drop in tension after a stressful period, for example if I study a lot. Also last year, just after the Christmas holidays in January, I studied a lot for a lot of tests and in fact the week after every day I was sick, not so much, I used to get a lot one day, after training sometimes, and more or less enough, when I have my cycle. P3-F-15

- Let’s say that I tend to stress myself so much for questions even though I do well and have good grades, let’s say that I tend to stress myself too much because I am afraid of the result, of not doing well, of not making it. P12-F-17

17) Emotional stress I get angry and I get a headache.

- If I know it’s not going to go well no [the test at school], if I know it’s going well and then it’s not going well, when I get home I get very angry and I get a headache. P10-M-14

- I get angry and I get a headache. P23-M-11

18) Physical stress

- On training days [basket] it comes to me more or less towards the end because I make a lot of effort and it’s more likely to come to me. P13-M-13

- An episode when I was playing good volleyball I got this headache I couldn’t play and I got angry. P16-F-14

19) Physical aetiology

- My parents thought it was because of my eyesight, because of my near-sightedness I’m kind of getting worse all the time. I made some visits and initially it was because of this but it’s not that I always get worse so we understood that it wasn’t because of my eyesight. P12-F-17

- The headache, I remember, came mostly after they found me a… how do you say, an earache, which was piercing my eardrum, after that time there they discovered my headache. P4-F-17