Ake Mattsson

Ake Mattsson

Ake Mattsson, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, died from complications due to lung cancer on Tuesday, March 31, 2009, at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. He was 79 years old and resided in the District of Columbia.

Ake arrived to the United States as a Rockefeller exchange pediatric intern in 1956 and studied at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1957, he trained at Case Western Reserve Medical School under Benjamin Spock. He immigrated to the United States in 1960 for continued pediatric, psychiatric, and psychoanalytic training in Cleveland. He began research in Cleveland focusing on the psychological factors for individuals living with hemophilia and their families. This research continued throughout much of his career.

From 1970 until 1977, he was director of child psychiatry at the University of Virginia. After leaving Virginia, he spoke fondly of his work at the University and of living in Charlottesville.

After one year at the University of Pittsburgh as a professor of pediatrics and child psychiatric medicine, he became director of child and adolescent psychiatry at New York University Bellevue Hospital in New York City from 1978 until 1985. In 1985, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden, to be head of child psychiatry at Danderyd's Hospital outside Stockholm.

He returned to Charlottesville in 1988 and in 1992 became chair of child psychiatry at East Carolina Medical School in Greenville, North Carolina. He moved to St. Thomas in 1997 and in 2003 moved to Washington, D.C. where he practiced until shortly before his death.

He was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1929, to Erik and Thyra Mattsson and studied at the Karolinska Medical School.

He is survived by his second wife, Judy Whitley Powell Mattsson; and her daughters, Cameron Powell and her partner, Daniel Lamm; and Collett Hudecek and her husband, Brian, and their daughters, Cooper and Isla; and by his first wife, Margareta Mattsson and their sons, Erik Mattsson, Peter Mattsson and his fiancee, Jennifer Achilles, and Nicholas Mattsson; former daughter-in-law, Jeanne La Plante; and his grandson, Samuel Mattsson.

In lieu of flowers, his family asks that Dr. Mattsson be remembered with a donation to Doctors Without Borders USA, P.O. Box 5030, Hagerstown, MD 21741-5030.


This obituary was originally published in the Daily Progress.