Figure 2.

Baseline mood vs. pain in 277 patients with subacute sciatica, regardless of subsequent surgical or nonsurgical treatment. Overall intensity of "bodily pain" over the month before seeing a surgeon for sciatica explains about 13% of the variance in depressive and anxious feelings over the same period (p < 0.0001), assessed by the five-item SF-36 Mental Health Subscale (top panel). Higher scores on the y axis correspond to better mood. The other panels show similar relations to pain of the three items of the subscale pertaining to depressed mood (middle) and the two items pertaining to anxiety (bottom).