Objectives: Although electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been found to be one of the most robust and rapid treatments for severe depression, it is widely underused partly because of negative perceptions and inaccurate knowledge about the treatment.
Methods: The 18-item ECT Perception and Knowledge (ECT-PK) measure was developed through a systematic review of the literature, subject matter expert ratings, and examination of content validity. The ECT-PK consists of Perception and Knowledge subscales, which were tested on a national sample of 1091 US adults who screened positive for depression in 2018 through Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform.
Results: Evaluation of the ECT-PK subscales found that both subscales demonstrated good construct validity, criterion validity, and internal consistency reliability. Participants who had higher Perception and Knowledge subscale scores were significantly more likely to report that they were willing to try ECT. The ECT-PK revealed that many participants reported fears about pain, brain damage, and memory loss resulting from ECT, and had inaccurate knowledge about ECT being outdated or lacking scientific evidence.
Conclusions: Together, these results showed that the ECT-PK is an efficient and effective contemporary tool to measure the perception and knowledge of ECT, and highlights areas in need of psychoeducation.