Curated headlines from the field's leading publications and journals — psychiatry, therapy, and behavioral health business — refreshed throughout the day.
80 stories from Becker's Behavioral Health · Clear
Nearly five months after California’s psychiatric nurse staffing ratios took effect, the state’s Medicaid agency is weighing a plan to send money that providers have sought to help absorb the mandate’s costs to programs further downstream. One psychiatric hospital CEO told Becker…
Calls to the Washington Poison Center involving kratom and one of its active compounds, 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH, rose 433% over the past three years, with the sharpest increase in 2026, CBS affiliate KIRO 7 News reported Oct. 29. The center logged 176 kratom- and 7-OH-relat…
The share of U.S. children and adolescents ages 5-17 who have ever received an attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnosis rose from 9.9% in 2019 to 13.8% in 2025, according to CDC data published Oct. 29. The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics released the finding…
California has the most professionally active psychiatrists while Wyoming has the fewest, according to KFF data as of September 2026. KFF tallied active MDs and DOs in each state and the District of Columbia using a special data request of state licensing information from Redi-Da…
Tulsa, Okla.-based OSU Medicine launched OSU Maternal and Addiction Recovery Care, a program that offers prenatal care, addiction treatment and mental health counseling in one location to pregnant and postpartum patients with substance use disorders. The program held a ribbon-cut…
The number of U.S. specialty behavioral health hospitals rose to 667 in 2024, an increase of 22 since 2020, according to the American Hospital Association’s 2026 Fast Facts: Behavioral Health infographic. Specialty behavioral health hospitals made up 11% of all U.S. hospitals. Th…
Stimulants were involved in 46.2% of drug use-associated infective endocarditis hospitalizations in 2022, up from 37.3% in 2016, according to a study published Oct. 27 in Clinical Infectious Diseases. Researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Washi…
Portland, Ore.-based Central City Concern will permanently close the Letty Owings Center, Oregon’s largest residential addiction treatment center for pregnant and parenting women, at the end of October, InvestigateWest reported Oct. 29. The 29-bed center opened in 1989 and allowe…
Houston-based PsychPlus has acquired Precision Psychiatric Services, a California psychiatric group, adding more than 100 psychiatrists to its clinical network. PsychPlus announced the deal Oct. 23. Financial terms were not disclosed. Precision, founded in 2018, is a physician-le…
Mikia Antoneice Noble, co-owner and COO of Advancing Communities Everywhere, a mental health provider in the Richmond, Va., area, was arrested Oct. 28 on federal charges alleging the company billed Virginia Medicaid more than $49 million for crisis services it did not deliver as…
New York will receive $10 million in federal funding over five years to expand behavioral health services in primary care settings, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Oct. 27. The state Office of Mental Health will administer the grant through a new initiative called Advancing…
Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente has given $15 million to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland to build a behavioral health wing that will include the hospital’s first dedicated inpatient psychiatric rooms. The 21,300-square-foot wing will have 20 private inpatient psy…
Federal health officials have proposed loosening a ban on mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, or MGPI, a potent opioid compound found in some kratom products, to allow the substance at certain levels, The New York Times reported Oct. 28. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the p…
The Chicago-based American Medical Association and eight other physician organizations joined a legal challenge to CMS regulations that could make it harder for individuals with substance use disorders and other serious medical conditions to qualify for an exemption from Medicaid…
King of Prussia, Pa.-based Universal Health Services reached a tentative agreement in August to resolve all outstanding claims in lawsuits tied to alleged sexual abuse of patients at its New Kent, Va.-based Cumberland Hospital for Children and Adolescents, according to the system…
Adolescents who agreed or strongly agreed that religious beliefs were very important in their lives had lower rates of alcohol use, nicotine vaping and illicit drug use than those who disagreed or strongly disagreed with that statement, according to a September 2026 report from t…
AI is earning its keep in parts of behavioral health operations. For the care managers and social workers who meet with patients every month, it isn’t there yet, according to Corey Cronrath, DO, chief medical officer and chief technology officer of Nashville, Tenn.-based Mental H…
Wausau, Wis.-based North Central Health Care named Trisa Danz, MD, chief medical officer. In her new role, Dr. Danz will strengthen clinical quality, foster collaboration across programs, and advance safe, effective, person-centered care, according to an Oct. 23 hospital news rel…
From a 292-bed state-funded psychiatric hospital in Texas to New Mexico’s only children’s emergency psychiatric unit, hospitals and health systems are expanding behavioral health access as demand continues to grow. Here are 62 behavioral health projects to know:
A drop in drug overdose deaths drove most of the 2025 decline in unintentional injury deaths, the largest single contributor to the falling U.S. death rate, according to an Oct. 27 analysis from HHS’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Unintentional inj…
A series of recent studies highlights widening gaps in mental health access, shifting prescription patterns and mixed outcomes across behavioral healthcare in the U.S. The findings point to growing pressures on providers, uneven availability of services and emerging questions aro…
Winchester, Va.-based Valley Health opened its Behavioral Health Pavilion Oct. 26, consolidating outpatient mental and behavioral health services previously spread across several locations into one facility on the Winchester Medical Center campus. The pavilion serves children and…
Health systems are investing in care coordination programs for patients who visit the emergency department most often, many of them for needs the ED can’t meet. By connecting patients with housing, food, transportation, behavioral health and medical services, the goal is clear: k…
A case report from researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora links tirzepatide, sold as Zepbound, to lithium toxicity in a 50-year-old woman with bipolar disorder. It is the fourth reported case of tirzepatide-associated lithium toxicity, MedPage…
The Illinois Department of Human Services will keep 25 of 75 minimum-security mental health beds open at Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center in Anna, Ill., scaling back a plan to close all of them. The department will phase out the remaining 50 beds by July 2027, Capito…
The Department of Veterans Affairs is preparing to expand access to psychedelic therapies for veterans with mental health conditions, with as many as 2.1 million potentially benefiting from the treatments, according to an Oct. 25 report from Politico. Andrew Gradison, a senior ad…
Nearly 1 in 3 young adults in the U.S. reported using generative AI to seek substance-related information, with higher rates of use among Black and male respondents, according to a study published Oct. 19 in JMIR Formative Research. Researchers at Rutgers, the State University of…
Pullman, Wash.-based Washington State University received a $7.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the effects of kratom on chronic pain, sleep and quality of life. The five-year project will examine how kratom works, its potential benefits and associa…
The geriatric inpatient mental health unit at Oklahoma City VA Health Care System reduced behavioral reports by 35% during the first year of implementing nonpharmacological interventions for veterans with dementia, according to a July 2026 American Hospital Association case study…
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly favors Stanford (Calif.) University psychiatrist Shebani Sethi, MD, PhD, to lead the National Institute of Mental Health, bypassing a candidate recommended by National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, Science…
Researchers have identified evidence supporting a potential subtype of clinical depression, known as “circadian depression,” defined by disrupted sleep-wake patterns and associated with more severe symptoms and poorer responses to commonly prescribed antidepressants, according to…
A patient who comes back to the emergency department repeatedly is often bringing more than a medical problem. Unstable housing, mental health and substance use challenges, food insecurity, unreliable transportation and trouble getting follow-up care can all send individuals back…
Behavioral health leaders are grappling with a workforce paradox: Demand for services continues to grow, yet funding uncertainty and inadequate reimbursement rates are forcing some providers to reduce staff and scale back services. Here are 14 layoffs to know: 1. South Bend, Ind.…
Universities are investing in the behavioral health workforce by expanding certificates and degree programs amid nationwide shortages. This comes as workforce shortages worsened in 2025 from 2024, according to federal data. As of Dec. 13, 2025, the number of designated mental hea…
Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine launched a child and adolescent integrated behavioral healthcare concentration in collaboration with Boston Medical Center’s TEAM UP Scaling and Sustainability Center, according to an Oct. 22 BU Today report. The concen…
Federal prosecutors charged four defendants in an alleged substance abuse treatment fraud scheme involving over $1.6 billion in billings to private insurers for sham treatment, the largest case of its kind the Justice Department has ever prosecuted. The case was part of a broader…
Optum is asking a Baltimore court to throw out Maryland’s $380 million fraud lawsuit over a failed Medicaid behavioral health claims system, calling the state’s allegations “a story that it knows is untrue.” In its Oct. 19 motion to dismiss, Optum argued the case is a contract di…
First responders were called to Kalamazoo (Mich.) Behavioral Health Hospital 299 times from January 2025 through the week of Oct. 12, 2026, as the facility faces possible license revocation over patient safety violations, according to an Oct. 16 News Channel 3 report. Emergency d…
Anxiety and depression increased among LGBTQ+ youth over a two-year period, even as rates of self-harm and suicide attempts declined, according to findings published Oct. 20 by The Trevor Project. The findings come from Project SPARK, an ongoing longitudinal study that surveyed 1…
South Bend, Ind.-based Beacon Health System is laying off several social workers as it moves behavioral health crisis screening in its Beacon Kalamazoo (Mich.) emergency department to telehealth, CBS affiliate WWMT reported Oct. 22. “As Beacon Health System continues evaluating h…
Florida State University in Tallahassee is building a statewide behavioral healthcare data repository to help researchers and policymakers assess mental health and substance use treatment outcomes across the state. The Florida Behavioral Health Care Data Repository stems from the…
The California Hospital Association and dozens of hospitals are calling on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration to provide at least $275 million for Medi-Cal inpatient psychiatric services. The request, made in an Oct. 20 letter to the administration, comes as California faces a sh…
New York City-based NYU Langone Health opened a psychiatric emergency unit in Brooklyn, expanding its capacity to treat patients in behavioral health crises and connect them with hospital- and community-based care. The new Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program at NYU Langon…
Talkiatry has made its therapy services available nationwide, expanding access to its coordinated psychiatry and therapy model across all 50 states. The company employs over 400 therapists, 85% of whom hold licenses in multiple states. Its services are available to more than 170…
Negril, a mental health and disability care company, and its owners agreed to a $1,817,910.60 civil settlement over allegations of improperly billing Virginia Medicaid for mental health services. Federal officials alleged that Negril submitted claims for mental health skill-build…
Gabriela Barth joined Knoxville, Tenn.-based Covenant Health as vice president of behavioral health services. Ms. Barth recently served as interim CEO with Fort Myers, Fla.-based Park Royal Hospital. She has nearly a decade of healthcare leadership experience, with previous roles…
More than a dozen companies are racing to win FDA approval for ketamine-based mental health treatments. Providers warn that one company’s bid could sharply raise the cost of the generic drug, while most of the new products are designed to skip the talk therapy many clinicians con…
Belmont, Mass.-based McLean Hospital, part of Mass General Brigham, plans to establish a metabolic psychiatry center backed by a $20 million grant from Baszucki Group, an organization founded by Roblox CEO David Baszucki and Jan Ellison Baszucki that funds research at the interse…
States that legalized online sports betting saw increases in antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication use, along with outpatient diagnoses of depression and anxiety, a study published Oct. 14 in JAMA Psychiatry found. Researchers at the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Bloomberg S…
East Providence, R.I.-based Bradley Hospital named Chase Samsel, MD, vice president and chief medical officer. Dr. Samsel, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and physician, will lead the hospital’s clinical programs and advance its mission to provide evidence-based pediatric beh…
Physician burnout continues to decline nationwide, but hospitals and health systems are taking different approaches to addressing workplace stress, including changes to physician surveys, board oversight and clinician leadership training, according to a American Hospital Assocati…
Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Medicine Children’s Health appointed Douglas Vanderbilt, MD, as chief of the division of developmental and behavioral pediatrics. Dr. Vanderbilt takes over from Heidi Feldman, MD, PhD, who served as the division’s founding chief and led the progra…
Spokane, Wash.-based Focused Behavior Solutions, an applied behavior analysis provider for children with autism, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Oct. 8 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Washington. The company is reorganizing under Subchapter V, a streamlin…
Kevin Gray, MD, chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, is leading a federally funded program supporting physician-scientists conducting research on youth mental health and substance use disorders. D…
Sacramento, Calif.-based University of California Davis Health has expanded its behavioral health services with an accelerated treatment option for patients with treatment-resistant depression at its Advanced Psychiatric Therapeutics clinic in East Sacramento. The treatment, know…
People with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder face a higher risk of death from any cause, as well as from suicide, injuries and natural causes, compared with people without the condition, according to a study published Oct. 19 in JAMA Network Open. Researchers from the Uni…
Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Parkridge Valley Hospital has named Carlos Salcedo CFO. Mr. Salcedo most recently served as assistant CFO at Hermitage, Tenn.-based TriStar Summit Medical Center, according to an Oct. 19 LinkedIn post from Parkridge Health System. He brings experience in…
As the push to integrate behavioral health into primary and specialty care gains momentum, a number of health systems are appointing new leaders to oversee this transformation. These executives are tasked with aligning behavioral health strategies across clinical settings, buildi…
Federal regulators are drawing a firmer line between the kratom leaf and the concentrated, lab-altered compounds sold beside it in gas stations, smoke shops and online. The consequences of that second category are already showing up in poison center calls, emergency departments a…
A former Tennessee mental health counseling center owner was sentenced Oct. 13 to three years of probation and ordered to pay $1,048,840 in restitution for failing to pay employment taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, the Justice Department said. Mari Alexander, 52, was the so…
Mental health ghost networks reach well beyond public insurance programs. Directory errors affected 55.6% of evaluable secret shopper calls to psychiatrists and psychologists listed by the largest commercial carrier in each of five states, according to a study published Oct. 16 i…
Behavioral health patients often wait longer than other emergency department patients for a bed. Along the way, patients may end up receiving care in the most expensive setting available, or experiencing distress in an often-hectic environment. Now, health systems are testing sev…
Vancouver, Wash.-based PeaceHealth secured certificate-of-need approval from the Oregon Health Authority for its proposed 89-bed psychiatric hospital in Springfield, Ore. The project, known as Timber Springs Behavioral Health Hospital, now hinges on an annexation request pending…
Three health systems have each put nine figures behind behavioral health, and two of them already have results to show for it. The spending stretches across the full continuum of care: new inpatient beds, dedicated psychiatric emergency space, outpatient follow-up and crisis resp…
Every week, Detroit-based Henry Ford Health’s behavioral health service was seeing 500 to 600 referrals from patients arriving in primary care. Deepak Prabhakar, MD, wanted to make sure those referrals end with the right care, not just an appointment. The system’s answer was Same…
From large health systems to community-based centers, behavioral health providers are facing adversity with pending regulatory actions, looming funding changes and cuts to already tight reimbursement rates, leading to the closure of facilities and potential disruptions of care. H…
The Georgia Poison Center has received 315 calls involving kratom-like products, including synthetic kratom, and reported four related deaths in 2026, according to an Oct. 14 report from WSB-TV. Eight out of every 10 calls involve the hospitalization of an overdose patient, Georg…
Monroe, Wash.-based EvergreenHealth Monroe has closed the Recovery Center at EvergreenHealth Monroe’s physical facility and ended its detox and residential treatment programs due to a significant plumbing issue. The hospital has not specified when the closure took effect or wheth…
Charlotte, N.C.-based Atrium Health plans to invest $340 million over five years to expand behavioral health services, including a new behavioral health hospital. Six things to know: 1. The new hospital will be created by renovating an existing building in Charlotte’s University…
The rate of opioid use disorder diagnoses among commercially insured patients rose 32.7% nationwide between 2022 and 2025, FAIR Health found in its latest analysis of commercial health claims. The national rate reached 596 patients with an opioid use disorder diagnosis per 100,00…
Adults with schizophrenia and Type 2 diabetes who started a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist were less likely to be hospitalized or seen in the emergency department for psychiatric reasons than peers who started a dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor, a sodium-glucose cotrans…
The Washington Poison Center warned the public Oct. 6 that some supplements sold as cat’s claw are counterfeit products spiked with concentrated kratom-related chemicals that behave like strong opioids. The poison center said the products are causing opioid overdoses and severe w…
Multiple juvenile patients were arrested after two disturbances Oct. 4 at Oasis Behavioral Health in Chandler, Ariz., involving assaults on staff and police officers and unauthorized access to controlled substances, according to a Chandler Police Department statement shared with…
Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services has proposed eliminating 38 beds across two state psychiatric hospitals and closing a residential psychiatric treatment facility as part of an effort to reduce state spending, PBS and NPR affiliate Nebraska Public Media reported…
The National Labor Relations Board has issued a consolidated complaint against Rogers Memorial Hospital, which operates as Rogers Behavioral Health, alleging the behavioral health provider unlawfully fired six employees for union-related activities and interfered with workers’ la…
The FDA has taken a string of actions in recent months that could reshape how substance use disorders, ADHD and other behavioral health conditions are treated in the years ahead. From clearing a novel alcohol use disorder drug for trials to approaching the first new ADHD medicati…
Philadelphia’s first licensed mobile narcotic treatment program is now operating through a partnership between Merakey, a substance use disorder treatment provider, and the city’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, PennWatch reported Oct. 12. Th…
CVS Pharmacy has agreed to pay $315 million to resolve Justice Department allegations that it illegally filled opioid and other controlled substance prescriptions, according to an Oct. 13 news release. Here are five things to know:
Behavioral healthcare M&A activity climbed in 2025, and transactions in 2026 suggest continuing activity across the sector. Deal volume rose more than 42% in 2025 with 104 publicly announced transactions, compared to 73 in 2024 and 83 in 2023. Here are 16 transactions to know in…
Michigan regulators are seeking to revoke the license of Kalamazoo (Mich.) Behavioral Health Hospital, which is owned by South Bend, Ind.-based Neuropsychiatric Hospitals, following an investigation that uncovered ongoing violations of state licensing requirements related to pati…
Headlines and excerpts are aggregated from AACAP (JAACAP journal), American Psychiatric Association, Becker's Behavioral Health, Behavioral Health Business, Behavioral Health News, Psychiatric Times. All rights remain with the original publishers; select a headline to read the full article at the source.