“I love Stockholmers and Stockholm. This has been a tough decision. But the price of my duties is too high,” the mayor said in a statement on the Moderate Party website.
“At the moment this is the right thing for me and my family. Now I will get the time for us that we so badly need,” she added.
In November last year Axén Olin took a month off work to resume a treatment programme she had begun earlier in the year for an alcohol problem.
In January 2007, Axén Olin revealed that she had almost had a breakdown after a trying election campaign coupled with a series of family tragedies.
A new mayor will be formerly elected by the city council in the near future, said Axén Olin.