Dr. Peter Szatmari ’70

Peter started at UCC in ‘junior form’ (Year 3) in 1959 and graduated from grade 13 in 1970. He went on to attend McMaster Medical School and finished his residency as a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. During the span of his career, Peter has focused on child wellbeing, mental health and autism research, becoming a leading expert and making significant contributions to the Autism Spectrum Disorder field.

Within the first three decades of his career at McMaster University, Peter held numerous leadership positions, most notably as head of the Offord Centre for Child Studies and head of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, and as vice-chair, Research of the Department. Under his guidance, McMaster developed the first autism clinic for children in Canada, where he trained a new generation of clinicians to become experts in the recognition of different forms of autism and best treatments. 

In 2013, he relocated to Toronto to assume the combined positions of chief, Child and Youth Mental Health Collaborative, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and The Hospital for Sick Children, and director of the Division of Child and Youth Mental Health, University of Toronto, where he stayed until 2021. Currently Peter holds the Patsy and Jamie Anderson Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health at CAMH and is director of the Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression. He is also the leader of the Pathways in Autism Spectrum Disorder study, which has followed a large cohort of children with autism from early childhood to late adolescence to map how children with the disorder develop over time. 

His work has been motivated by a desire to provide developmentally-sensitive mental health care to children and youth, who have traditionally been poorly served by health systems. His innovative and internationally-recognized research program of clinical trials in youth depression seeks to transform the lives of children and youth struggling with common mental disorders.  This has resulted in policy reforms in Canada, as well as awards and recognition from organizations such as the Royal Society of Canada, the International Society of Autism Research and the Institute of Human Development and Youth Health. Peter has consulted with health organizations around the world, and his published work includes more than 395 scholarly articles and two books. 

Peter never misses an opportunity to educate the public and break down stigmas surrounding child and youth mental health, because there is no health without mental health.