Junior medical students' knowledge about and attitudes towards electroconvulsive therapy in a South African setting.

The findings indicate that for these students, media is the main source of ECT knowledge. While they are generally knowledgeable about ECT, they still harbour some misconceptions and negative attitudes about the treatment. Knowledge appears able to amend these attitudes, thus underlining the importance of integrating accurate information about ECT into the preclinical medical curriculum rather than leaving it to mass media to forge warped perceptions and attitudes for these future clinicians.