If symptoms of anxiety or depression are not elevated at baseline, there may be little room for improvement over the course of treatment. In order to assess whether the symptoms of anxiety and depression at pre-treatment were elevated in samples not diagnosed with anxiety or mood disorders (e.g., individuals with cancer, pain or other medical problems), we compared scores on the measures of anxiety and depression used in the relevant studies with cutoff scores that mark an elevated level. Specifically, we calculated 95% confidence intervals for the pre-treatment means on all anxiety and depression measures for which established or suggested clinical cutoff scores are available. If the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval was greater than or equal to the cutoff score, we considered the sample to have an elevated level of anxiety or depression at pre-treatment.
