Non-invasive neuromodulation techniques have attracted extensive attention due to their safety, effectiveness, and repeatability. Among them, transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation (tFUS), as an emerging regulatory method, has shown clinical potential in the treatment of mental illnesses by virtue of its advantages such as non-invasiveness, high spatial resolution, and ability to target deep brain regions. This article summarizes the biophysical mechanisms of tFUS, as well as the regulatory targets, effects, and research progress of tFUS in various mental illnesses including depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, substance abuse, anxiety disorder, and schizophrenia. It also discusses the main problems existing at the current stage, such as the lack of clinical studies, small-sample exploratory trials, incomplete clarification of mechanisms, and the lack of standardized parameters. In addition, it looks forward to its future development directions: Conducting large-sample, multi-center randomized controlled trials, integrating neuroimaging and other technologies, promoting its transformation into a precise and standardized treatment method so as to provide a theoretical basis and practical reference for the clinical transformation of tFUS in the treatment of mental disorders.