Her training has taken her across most of the mental health system: community mental health, child advocacy centers, partial hospitalization, and hospital-based care. She completed her fellowship at Houston Methodist Hospital and remains affiliated with Houston Methodist alongside her private practice. That range means she is comfortable with presentations that other practices refer out, and equally comfortable with a person who simply wants to think clearly about their life.
Most of the people Dr. Carlson sees want two things at once: relief now, and an understanding that makes the relief hold.
She has also spent years working internationally, in refugee camps and in communities in Kenya, Rwanda, and Ghana, on mental health awareness and on building local capacity for care. That work shaped how she practices here. It made her slower to assume, more attentive to culture and context, and more convinced that people's difficulties make sense once you understand the world that formed them.
Dr. Carlson is interested in the relationship between physical health and emotional life, and in what happens to mood when the body is unwell or changing. For clients who want it, she welcomes spirituality and Christian faith in the room as a real part of how they make sense of their lives.
Dr. Carlson grew up in Pennsylvania and lives in Houston with her husband and their three young children. She puts a premium on laughter alongside living with purpose, and would rather be on the floor wrestling her kids on a Friday night than almost anywhere else.
- Licensure
- Licensed Psychologist, State of Texas, License #38750
- Doctorate
- PsyD in Clinical Psychology, Wheaton College
- Telehealth
- PSYPACT authorized, permitting telepsychology with clients in participating states
- Fellowship
- Houston Methodist Hospital
- Training
- Community mental health · child advocacy centers · partial hospitalization