Autism services-related deals surged 100% from the end of 2024 to the first quarter of 2025, reaching their highest volume since Q4 2020.

Overall, behavioral health deal volume picked up in Q1 of 2025 after a two-year lull, according to new data from M&A advisory firm The Braff Group. The first quarter of the year had 52 deals, according to Braff.

“After two disappointing quarters, all health care services deals got back on track, surging 20% over Q4 2024,” Dext Braff, president of The Braff Group, told Behavioral Health Business in an email. “Notably, the rise came from multiple sectors, with behavioral health leading the way. When we drill down to behavioral health, Q1 was a great quarter as well, up 53% vs. Q4 2024 and the second highest output since Q1 of 2022.”

Autism wasn’t the only behavioral health category seeing an uptick in deals. Mental health continues to be an investor darling, stacking up 19 deals in the year’s first quarter.

Meanwhile, deals in the substance use disorder (SUD) and intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) category were also up quarter over quarter.

While Q1’s numbers paint a rosy picture of the deal environment, the volatile markets make it hard to predict what’s next for behavioral health dealmaking.

At the start of the year, a few factors worked in behavioral health’s favor, including many assets reaching their typical hold period and limited partners itching to get the payout of their investment. However, the Trump administration’s potential tariffs and cuts to Medicaid have made the industry outlook murky.

“After so many down quarters, buyers have to be buyers. Particularly private equity, which simply must get back in the game in a substantial way to deploy increasingly aging dry powder. Candidly, we’ve been surprised that this factor alone didn’t seem to play out in Q3 and Q4 of 2024, when overall M&A activity was up,” Braff told BHB in an email. “So, our read is that perhaps buyers in behavioral health and health care services overall are finally catching up to what we’ve seen in the rest of the M&A market. We expect these competing factors – the tariffs, inflation, interest rates, Medicaid, and economic uncertainty versus pressure for buyers to deploy capital – will last at least three to six months.  But we are cautiously optimistic that buyer needs will offset at least some of the economic and legislative turmoil.”

Still, the unpredictable markets could have an upside for private deals.

“Generally speaking, sometimes when the international markets and the public markets are more volatile, people will look at privately held companies as a more safe way to place their bet,” Steve Garbon, managing director of behavioral health and health care staffing at The Braff Group, said at the Autism Investor Summit. ”​​So this could work in our favor, but once again, the interest rates are something that we want to closely monitor.”

Even in this environment, some business types may fare better than others during this wave of uncertainty around Medicaid coverage, tariffs and a potential recession.

“If there’s volatility in the markets, people want to invest in a space that there’s a lot of demand and need [such as] behavioral health, autism services, and where your customer may not be price sensitive, if those services are being reimbursed by commercial insurance,” Garbon said. “There’s not the same pressures on commercial insurance as there might be with Medicaid. So I would expect to see, and I’m already hearing it from private equity, what do you have that fits that model?”