Big Mental Health Stories & Trends to Watch in 2026

welcome to Mental Health Evolution, a podcast about what's changing in mental health and why it matters. I'm your host, Rachel Harrison, inviting you into honest conversations with people from all perspectives in the field. Clinicians, tech founders, investors, insurance companies, and all the folks in between. Let's explore what's working, what's not, and what's next.

Welcome back everyone to the Mental Health Evolution Podcast. Last week we wrapped up 2025 by listening to some of my favorite clips from this new podcast. I mentioned that I would be following up with some of the big news stories that we see going on in 2026. Here are some of the things I think we're going to be talking about this year. We have already booked several guests and I am excited to share with you the conversations. I also know that there are going to be surprises, there are going to be things that pop up that are not even on my radar right now. And I'd love to hear from you about what you're seeing as well. The more we all talk about it, the more we all raise the conversation, the better off we're going to be at the end of whatever all these changes are that lead to excellent care, hopefully for clients, and good work situations for clinicians as well as small businesses. So please reach out. We'd love to hear from you. I want to kind of start off this conversation with something that inspired me. Earlier this week I went to the Delaware Healthcare Forum, which was a gathering of people who were there to talk about leading through the storm and all the changes in healthcare in general, mental health being one of them. And it was a very inspiring con conference and I think I want to highlight for a moment and give a shout out to the keynote speaker who was Phil Guoque, who talked about bold leadership as being the ability to open up collaboration and having difficult conversations with seemingly opposing perspectives or initiatives. He talked about those differences in so many ways between different people, different beliefs, different generations, and how we all look at the workforce and look at what's happening. But it was inspiring to hear and the vibe it this vibes well I feel like with the goals of our podcast, which is to raise the conversation no matter what the changes, to hear from even seeming opposing viewpoints because we are all people and how we make decisions in this industry and what we're talking about is really important and has ethical ramifications and honestly impacts I think for generations to come. So those are some of the things we are going to be highlighting this year. And the first topic that I want to sort of talk about is the idea that the behavioral health market is growing. It's growing in size. Recent research shows that the global behavioral health market is projected to grow around the $330 billion by 2034. That is up roughly from 185 billion in 2025. That is an enormous amount of money. And that kind of highlights why there are all kinds of people, investors, tech companies looking to get into this field and get a piece of that market share. The things driving this rising mental health awareness, expansion of telehealth and digital therapy, and more acceptance of behavioral health as a mainstream part of care. You know, I've been in this industry long enough and I remember when people were saying we just need more awareness or we just need to reduce the stigma that has happened. We are there. And this I think is the growth that we're seeing from that. It does create opportunities. It also creates challenges. More demand and investment could mean more resources and better access and innovations. On the other hand, it means probably consolidation, increased pressure on small and traditional human based practices and competition from large digital first providers. Just things to talk about and consider as we go into the next year. For people running traditional therapy practices or small group practices, this could be a turning point for those interested in leveraging technology, teletherapy, hybrid models, human and AI blends. It could also be a chance to expand reach or rethink what this all means. My hope is that no matter where this goes, we consider client care as being primary and that we consider ethical considerations for all of the decisions that we make to the best of our ability. And I think that brings up the next topic that is definitely already happening. And I think we'll just talk about it more and more. We've already talked about it. You heard some of the clips from this in the year review of 2025. But the idea of hybrid care models so like a human AI blend and I think there are a lot more people looking into this. I think a lot of people are recognizing the pitfalls of AI. There are lots of lawsuits going on right now for harm that has been caused when AI acts as a therapist, especially all on its own. And so a lot of people I think are moving toward this. AI. Assisted care, meaning AI can help with scheduling, administrative notes, treatment planning, outcome tracking, and maybe even providing support between sessions. And the hope is that if this is managed by a human, maybe it will not go astray as it has in some of the AI alone models. I think it's possible that this is a best of both worlds, figuring out how we integrate this, but also how we do this safely and wisely with client care at the core of what we're going to do here. And I think everybody's going to have to ask the questions of what are we comfortable with, what is ethical and what makes the most sense in our context. But it also brings questions about privacy, consent, data security, what's lost if too much is automated, how to preserve the therapeutic alliance, how to make sure digital tools don't reinforce inequities to access. And that is something that a lot of people have started to write about, even just the more and more accepted business models. We know that tech companies have literally said they are selling people's data. They are selling what we call protected health information that most of us were trained to protect no matter what. So some of these ethical things are being thrown out in the name of business. And I think we're going to continue to see how do we regulate, how do we talk about these two pieces? And that kind of leads me to AI and the government or public sector, because even if you don't choose to use it in your practice, it's happening all around us. The Department of Health and Human Services released a strategy recently expanding AI across all their internal operations, their data analysis, public health efforts, and possibly even care delivery. So on paper, this improves efficiency, right? This reduces overhead, all of those good things. But at the same time, it raises concerns with privacy, with security, with oversight of sensitive health data, with who is making decisions. Are we letting AI make decisions for human beings? That is not necessarily appropriate? Where is confidentiality supported? How do we build trust? So these are things we're going to have to watch as it plays out. And I don't think that the legislation or the governing bodies are able to keep up right now with putting in guidance, with putting in strategy, with putting in guidelines to offer protection to the people. The next topic that is coming up more and more is affordability of services and insurance pressures, the financial side of mental health care. So many people I know have experienced that premiums are rising. It is getting to be more and more expensive to get coverage for insurance. And that creates challenges for clients, that creates challenges for patients, that creates challenges for practices. All of this is happening where cost to members is going up, but payout to providers is going down. And so employer based health insurance continues to rise. And this is making it harder for companies to provide that care for their employees. It's Making harder for employees to purchase the care. And I think as we see these rising costs happen more and more, it's going to be a challenge to see how does that impact mental health care. I think we've already seen people who say, I can't even afford my copay anymore. There are also economic challenges that are impacting people in so many ways in so many different places in this country. And that is having an impact on whether someone can even access care with insurance. Medicaid costs and cuts are also going to potentially play into this. How are those cuts going to make access to care possible for people that maybe relied on Medicaid for their mental health care? These are all things that we're going to see play out as the year goes on and good things for us to be thinking about and talking about. Finally, we hear a lot about global mental health crisis and there are people who need care and cannot access it. But we are also seeing a shift. Now, Truly the marketing of a lot of these larger tech companies has been that they are helping to bridge the gap, that there is a mental health crisis. We don't have enough providers and we need to be able to bridge that gap. As they are buying up more and more market share with. What is happening to people that are already in the industry is that they are starting to see that shift as well. So as these online companies grow, perhaps in the people that they are providing care to, those who have been in this industry for years, whether as a private practice or a small group practice, small business, they are seeing the need to begin to market services where they used to have wait lists and more patients than they can serve. Or we are seeing a shift. It's been interesting to talk to different practices and different solo providers who are starting to say, I've never had to think about clients. There's always been an overabundance of clients or patients. And now we're starting to see that shift in different places. It's more so than others. But I think this is part of us seeing the trend of big tech companies and their market share and that is reducing the number of people that are going to the smaller individual private practitioners. Maybe this could be said to be growth and part of what is happening. It's a little bit of what maybe happened with Walmart coming in and the small Main street stores, if you will. So I think it's just worth talking about that. While yes, there are places where there are not enough services for patients. That is true. However, businesses, private practices are also starting to suffer and not having enough clients because a lot of these bigger companies and managed service organizations are hiring the very limited pool of clinicians. And so that's kind of another piece of, is that we definitely have a workforce gap happening. The median number of mental health workers globally. So globally, not just in the United states, but is 13 per 100,000 people. That's tough. Government spending on mental health remains low, often about 2% of total health budgets, leaving, of course, gaps in coverage. But even as these gaps are happening, another gap I see is that we just said limited spending on calling a master's degree counselor or a master's degree social worker an actual professional degree. And so how is this going to impact an already low workforce of mental health providers? We're also seeing that the workforce is a lot of newer and younger providers that have come into the field, which is awesome. But there's also a need for training, for supervision, for gaining some of the expertise to deal with the complexity of mental health challenges that people are facing in this day and age. So another topic to talk about, so many options to making sure that we are again focusing on providing the best client care that we can possibly provide. I think that's a good guiding point, a good North Star for us to kind of look at and try to be focusing on. And how do we do that in a way that is beneficial, that is ethical, that reaches the people that need it the most, that reaches all people who need it, ideally. So these are the things on my mind. These are the things going into the new year that we are bringing on guests to talk about. And as I've mentioned, if you want to access any of the articles that I've referenced in here, they will be in our show notes and in our newsletter. If you are not receiving our newsletter and you'd like to, please email us at them. H E P O d that's the mhepodmail.com you can also direct message us on social media and we'll make sure that we can get you on our newsletter list. We also want to hear from you. You've heard about this. We have some polls out there and we'd like to hear your suggestions on topics for guests, things that you're thinking about, things that are packing you, no matter which part of the industry you're in, whether you're receiving care, whether you're providing care, or whether you are a business in this industry. So the work we do in this industry is important. It's important that we continue to raise the conversations with all of the players and that we make the best choices that we possibly can going forward. Here is to a great new year. I hope you all are taking care of yourselves and I can't wait to talk more about the Mental Health evolution with you this year. Bye for now.