Mental health and rehabilitation professionals represent an important factor that can either facilitate or hinder the recovery process of people with psychiatric disabilities. Practitioners can inspire hope and empower mental health consumers in their efforts to overcome the disabling effects of a mental illness or they can instill hopelessness, dependence, and helplessness.

The development of the RPRS instrument focused on identifying and reliably measuring the competencies of mental health providers that have a particular impact on the recovery process beyond the management of psychiatric symptoms. Its development was informed by a new conceptual model about the structure of providers’ competencies titled “the pyramid model of recovery-promoting professional competence”