Behavioral Health M&A Index

Deal volume by quarter

Closed transactions only. "Traditional M&A" counts acquisitions and mergers of operating businesses; "growth deals" counts equity and growth financings, which are tracked separately because they are not sales of a business.

Subsector breakdowns are shown only for quarters where the publisher reported them. Prior-quarter figures are revised retrospectively — for example, Q1 2026 addiction treatment volume was first reported as five and later restated as six. This index uses the most recent published figure.

What the numbers say

Behavioral health transaction volume has fallen through 2026. Traditional M&A closings went from 40 in Q1 2025 to 34 in Q1 2026 and then 21 in Q2 2026 — the lightest quarter since the data set begins in 2022.

The decline is not evenly distributed. Mental health carried 14 of the 21 traditional deals in Q2 2026. Autism and I/DD carried six. Addiction treatment carried two.

That split matters if you own a substance use treatment facility, because it is the opposite of where the market was three years ago. For scale: 2025 saw roughly 180 behavioral health transactions tracked across all subsectors, of which addiction treatment accounted for about 33. In Q2 2026 it produced two.

Addiction treatment: the thinnest quarter on record

Addiction treatment closings ran 8, 7 and 7 across Q1 2025, Q2 2025 and Q4 2025. They fell to 6 in Q1 2026 and 2 in Q2 2026.

Read that carefully, because it is easy to misread. A lower deal count is not the same thing as lower demand. Buyers we speak with are still actively looking — what has changed is their appetite for paying for problems. Platform operators spent 2022 through 2024 acquiring, and several are now working through integration, payer renegotiation and, in some cases, balance sheet repair before they add again. Sellers whose facilities have concentrated payer mix, documentation gaps or unresolved licensure issues are finding that the bid they expected does not arrive.

The practical consequence for an owner is not "wait for the market." It is that the assets which do trade in a thin market are the clean ones, and the work that makes a facility clean takes twelve to twenty-four months. Starting that work now is what positions a sale for 2027 rather than 2030.

Methodology

This index compiles publicly reported transaction data. It is not a survey and it does not include undisclosed deals that were never announced.

• Quarterly deal counts and subsector splits: Mertz Taggart, Q1 2026 and Q2 2026 Behavioral Health M&A Reports.
• Annual announced transaction counts: Becker's Behavioral Health, which reported 104 publicly announced behavioral health transactions in 2025, against 73 in 2024.
• The two annual figures differ because they measure different things — announced versus tracked, and differing inclusion rules. Both are cited rather than reconciled.
• Figures are revised by publishers after initial release. This page uses the most recent published number and notes where a revision occurred.
• Multiples are deliberately excluded. Reliable transaction multiples are not publicly reported at this granularity, and a page that guessed at them would be worth nothing to the people citing it.

Cite this page

Journalists, analysts and advisers are welcome to cite this index. Suggested citation:

Westwood Behavioral Health (2026). Behavioral Health M&A Index — Q2 2026. https://westwood-bh.com/behavioral-health-ma-index/

Updated quarterly. If you would like the underlying table or a specific cut of the data, contact us.