Social and cultural conditions affecting the mental health of Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian adolescents living in and around Bar Elias, Lebanon

•Place-based approaches to mental health research can foster understandings of shared or communal factors of mental health.•Forced migrant adolescents and long-term resident adolescents experience similar challenges to having good mental health.•Limited mobility through public spaces, overcrowded housing and interpersonal violence is a risk factor for adolescent forced migrant and long-term residents’ mental health.•Phones with internet capabilities are associated with emotional support, particularly for adolescents who have been recently displaced.•Gender and being differently-abled are important intersectional identities which cut across refugee/citizen identity, and play an important role in how adolescents are affected by shared conditions.