Early 2026 US Funding Reversals and UK ADHD Backlogs Expose Fragile Mental Health Systems

Mental health care systems worldwide have entered 2026 under pressure to keep services stable, regulated, and connected. In the US, the administration abruptly canceled nearly $2 billion in Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration grants and then reversed course, prompting warnings from providers and grant recipients about disruption to programmes, staffing, and continuity of care.

Meanwhile, in the UK, The Guardian reported that the NHS is on track to overspend £164 million on ADHD services, with costs rising alongside record demand for assessments and increased reliance on private providers outside standard NHS pathways, including clinics described as operating with limited oversight, while patients face long waits through regulated routes.

Different countries and different conditions point to the same operational weakness: when demand spikes or funding shifts, mental health care often has too few regulated routes to keep patients in supervised treatment. The result is not only longer waits, but fragmentation, patients moving between services, losing follow-up, and being pushed into workarounds that are harder to govern.

Clinicians from Flow Neuroscience, a company behind the first FDA-approved non-drug, non-invasive, at-home treatment for depression, say these pressures are accelerating the need to shift toward multimodal care systems.

“When systemic care depends on one main route, e.g., SSRI-based drugs for depression, any disruption in that system shows up immediately as a gap,” said Dr. Kultar Singh Garcha, NHS GP and Chief Medical Officer at Flow Neuroscience. “Multimodal care could change the patient journey – in fact, it is how other areas of medicine manage chronic conditions, but it hasn’t reached mental health care yet.”

Multimodal care is not a slogan, clinicians add. Instead of repeating the same step for months, it enables earlier combinations (for example, psychotherapy plus medication plus a regulated non-drug option), closer monitoring of response, and faster course-correction when a treatment is not working.

In the US, a regulatory signal of this shift arrived in December 2025. The FDA granted premarket approval to Flow Neuroscience’s Flow FL-100, a device listed by the agency as a cranial electrotherapy stimulator to treat depression, marking the first PMA for a home-use, non-invasive brain-stimulation device specifically indicated for depression treatment.

“Approval alone didn’t (and won’t) solve access or capacity,” Dr Garcha added. “What matters is that slowly, it changes the rules. It creates a medical standard for a non-drug option, and whether it becomes part of routine care, rather than sitting in a gray zone between wellness marketing and medicine, depends on how health systems choose to integrate it.”

In some healthcare systems, that integration process has already begun.

While US approval is recent, tDCS (a technology behind the previously mentioned device) has been used under clinical supervision in the UK for years, including in NHS pathways in parts of the country. The NHS experience, however, shows that even where some regulated non-drug options exist, services can still face backlogs and overspending in other areas.

It does, however, show what integration can look like, clinicians add: supervised access, clinician oversight, added trust, and outcomes tracked within healthcare systems.

While tDCS falls under the electric medicine category, it is wider than any single technology. Currently, brain-stimulation approaches are being tested everywhere from hospitals to supervised home use. Despite that, as public interest grows, clinicians say one concern comes up repeatedly, shaped by older portrayals of brain stimulation.

“Some people may hear ‘electric treatment’ and think of electroconvulsive therapy,” said Dr. Hannah Nearney, clinical psychiatrist and UK Medical Director at Flow Neuroscience. “tDCS is not ECT. It does not induce seizures, it does not require anaesthesia, and it does not use the same intensity or mechanism. It uses a gentle, low-level current under clinical protocols. It has to be clearly explained that modern alternatives are nothing like these old techniques – and this is the first step to general acceptance.”

Researchers are also investigating whether tDCS and related neuromodulation techniques could have roles beyond unipolar depression. Studies are exploring applications across neurological and psychiatric areas, including pain and bipolar depression, with clinicians emphasising that evidence and regulation will differ by use case, and that larger controlled trials remain the standard for moving from feasibility to routine care.

“If we want a mental health system that can cope, we need flexibility built in,” concluded Dr. Nearney. “Multimodal care is that flexibility, and without it, demand will keep outgrowing the treatment pathways, no matter how much funding is added.”