Assessment tool
MIDAS migraine score
The MIDAS questionnaire measures how many days migraines cost you over the past three months. Answer five questions to see your disability grade.
On how many days in the last 3 months did you miss work or school because of your headaches?
Enter a number from 0 to 90.
About the MIDAS questionnaire
The Migraine Disability Assessment, or MIDAS, is a five-item questionnaire that measures how much migraines disrupt daily life. It counts the days over the past three months that you lost or worked at reduced capacity across three areas: paid work or school, household work and family or social activities. The five answers are added into a single score, which falls into one of four grades from I (little or no disability) to IV (severe disability).
The instrument was developed by Richard Lipton and Walter Stewart in the late 1990s and validated against daily headache diaries. It is short, reproducible and does not need a clinician to administer, which is why it became one of the most widely used migraine disability measures in neurology and headache research.
Clinicians use the score to gauge how much migraines are affecting you, to decide whether acute treatment alone is enough or a daily preventive is warranted, and to track whether treatment is working over time. The score measures disability, not the cause of the headaches. It does not diagnose migraine and does not replace a clinical review.
Common questions
What does a MIDAS score of 15 mean?
A score of 15 falls in Grade III, moderate disability, which covers scores of 11 to 20. Grade III is the level at which neurologists commonly recommend prescription migraine treatment. It points to migraines that regularly cost you days, not just an occasional bad headache.
What is a normal MIDAS score?
Scores of 0 to 5 are Grade I, little or no disability. Most people who do not have frequent or disabling migraines score in this range. A low score does not mean an individual attack is not severe, only that migraines are not costing you many days overall.
What MIDAS score means I should see a doctor about treatment?
Grade III (11 and above) is the usual threshold for considering prescription acute or preventive treatment, and Grade IV (21 and above) is severe. That said, even a low score is worth discussing with a clinician if single attacks are disabling, because MIDAS measures lost days, not the severity of one attack.
How is the MIDAS score calculated?
It is the simple sum of five day counts over the past three months: days missed and days at half productivity for work or school, the same two for household work, and days of missed family or social activities. Questions two and four exclude any days already counted in questions one and three so days are not double counted.
Is the MIDAS questionnaire accurate?
MIDAS is validated against headache diaries and is reproducible across repeat testing, which is why headache specialists rely on it. It measures disability and frequency rather than the intensity of a single attack, and it does not diagnose migraine on its own.