Symptomatic volunteers in multicenter drug trials.

1. Symptomatic volunteers were recruited at two collaborating institutions for anti-anxiety and antidepressant drug trials. Advertisements were placed for volunteers with significant symptoms of anxiety, depression, or both, and who were not currently in treatment. 2. It was possible to recruit adequate numbers of volunteers who met the numerous criteria for severity of distress; and who were not ruled out by various exclusion criteria, such as medical contraindications, etc. 3. Acceptable homogeneity across the samples at the collaborating institutions was found for demographic characteristics, level of distress, duration of symptoms, etc. 4. Attrition rates for these volunteers were lower than for the typical anxiolytic and antidepressant trials using outpatients. 5. Symptomatic volunteers appear to present a feasible alternative to the increasingly diminishing pool of outpatients.