A SOCial sITuational Systems approach to participatory qualitative inquiry: using remote walking interviews and pupil-teacher workshops to identify social situations related to adolescent mental health

Mental health problems in adolescence can have lasting impacts on health, educational and socioeconomic outcomes across the life course. However, current approaches in adolescent mental health do not fully capture the complexity of adolescents’ social and emotional contexts. Classic methods to understand influences on mental health take an individual-centred and decontextualised approach. This paper presents two elements of a SOCial sITuational Systems (SOCITS) approach, a novel methodology for identifying social situations and contextual factors that may influence adolescent mental health. We demonstrate the SOCITS approach to data collection and analysis within the context of two Scottish secondary schools. The first element is youth-led remote walking interviews with pupils, and the second element is staff-pupil systems thinking workshops. The SOCITS approach helped to uncover situations (S); contextual features of situations (C), interactions in the situation (I), responses to situations (R), and improvements to situations (I) related to stress loneliness, and mental health stigma. The SCIRI framework for data collection and analysis is transferrable to other topics and social contexts, and is suitable for rapid implementation by researchers, practitioners, and peer researchers.