In order to assess knowledge of and attitudes toward recovery-oriented practices among providers of mental health and substance abuse treatment and rehabilitation services throughout the state of Connecticut, an instrument named the Recovery Knowledge Inventory (RKI) was developed and administered. The items that comprise the instrument are based on the emerging literature on recovery in psychiatric and substance use disorders, and assess four different domains of understanding, namely: 1) roles and responsibilities in recovery, 2) non-linearity of the recovery process, 3) the roles of self-definition and peers in recovery, and 4) expectations regarding recovery. This paper describes the instrument and its preliminary psychometric properties, and provides an example of its utility in assessing the training needs of staff who increasingly are being expected to deliver recovery-oriented care.

Much to the joy of psychiatric rehabilitation practitioners, mental health advocates, and people with psychiatric disabilities, community mental health systems are moving increasingly to adopt a recovery orientation throughout their systems of care. Sanctioned most recently by the U.S. President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (Department of Health and Human Services [DHHS], 2003)—which stipulates recovery as the overarching aim of all mental health services—recovery-oriented concepts and language are becoming commonplace at professional conferences and in scholarly journals, and are appearing frequently in the policy initiatives of the federal government. With implementation of the New Freedom Commission Report's recommendations, in fact, all state mental health authorities are being asked to undergo radical transformations into “recovery-oriented systems of care.” These changes are at once both welcome and concerning.

Welcome, as it has taken over thirty years for the original recovery research of Strauss, Carpenter, Harding, Ciompi, and others to “cross over” from psychiatric rehabilitation into the broader clinical arena where it can influence all of psychiatric practice (Anthony, 1993, 2000; Carpenter & Kirkpatrick, 1988; Carpenter & Strauss, 1991; Chamberlin, 1978; Ciompi, 1980, 1984, 1997; Davidson, O'Connell, Tondora, Staeheli, & Evans, 2005; Davidson & McGlashan,...