Journal of Mixed Methods Research, Ahead of Print.
Meeting the mental health needs of rural populations is challenging internationally, with few methods and scarce data available to inform site-specific planning. We developed a mixed methods approach that integrates Not-for-profit (NFP) organization data in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to explore interrelated understandings of mental health experiences in rural places. Integrating qualitative experience data from online forums with quantitative data from service search and emergency pickup locations via GIS demonstrates how NFP health service data can be ethically sourced, reused, integrated, analyzed, and ground-truthed to explore how mental health is experienced in rural places. This article contributes to the mixed methods literature an ethical approach that utilizes NFP health service datasets to inform research in contexts of data scarcity.