Sensitive Inquiry in Mental Health

Abstract

This article presents an innovative tripartite approach for conducting safe and ethical ‘sensitive inquiry’ in the field of mental health recovery. The tripartite approach brings together the principles of recovery with trauma-informed practice and collective impact strategies. Together, these provide a framework for embedding and embodying recovery principles in research design and practice that empowers participants and ‘takes care’ of participants and researchers. The approach was effectively deployed in a 1-year qualitative arts–based study conducted with people living with severe and persistent mental illness. Its success was evident in the high retention rate of participants, despite their ongoing vulnerabilities, and in the elicitation of findings that expand current understandings of mental health recovery from the point of view of people with lived experience. In this article, we discuss the tripartite approach, how this was applied in the study, and what the design achieved in research outcomes and participant experience.