Erica Mattelin

I am a licensed psychologist and hold a PhD in Medical Science at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet. In parallel, I work with data and analytics within child and adolescent mental health services. My research focuses on children and young people in complex and vulnerable life situations, particularly in the context of exposure to violence, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and experiences of forced migration.

A central theme of my work is the development, evaluation, and implementation of evidence-based and scalable psychological interventions with relevance for routine clinical practice. I study both the mental-health consequences of trauma and migration, and how treatments—particularly low-intensity, transdiagnostic, and digitally delivered interventions—can be made accessible and clinically useful within ordinary care systems.

I obtained my degree in psychology from Uppsala University (2008–2013) and have worked clinically within child and adolescent mental health services, private practice, and Save the Children. In 2024, I was awarded a PhD from Linköping University for a doctoral thesis on children with experiences of forced migration. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at Karolinska Institutet.

I am currently involved in several research and development projects aimed at improving access to evidence-based care for children and young people exposed to violence and/or forced migration. Selected ongoing projects include:

Evaluation of Problem Management Plus (PM+) for young adults (16–25 years) with experiences of forced migration to Sweden, focusing on effectiveness, feasibility, and implementation.

Studies of internet-delivered trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy (TF-CBT) for PTSD in children and adolescents, with particular emphasis on clinical utility and scalability within public health-care systems.

The SHIELD project, which involves the development and evaluation of a structured tool for screening and early psychological interventions for children displaced from Ukraine, adapted for use in strained health-care and humanitarian settings.

In recent years, my teaching has primarily involved supervision of master’s theses within the psychology programme. In addition, I give lectures in courses at Karolinska Institutet and Linköping University, and have previously lectured at Uppsala University, on topics including PTSD, violence against children, forced migration, and global mental health.