Abstract

About ten years ago, I participated in a consensus process on migraine nomenclature. Participants used a modified Delphi technique to explore their views about what migraine is. Candidate concepts included an illness, disease, syndrome, condition, disorder, or susceptibility. Initially, there was a wide range of views about which concept best fits our concept of migraine. Migraine—in common with many psychiatric disorders—is poorly understood by neuroscience. On scientific grounds, participants thought that "susceptibility" and "syndrome" describes our current knowledge well. However, participants were concerned that terms like "susceptibility" and "syndrome" could lead to migraine not...