Opportunity for Life: The Link

Karen Horst, M.D.

Karen Horst, M.D.

		Medical Director Medical Director The Menopause Center Center for Reproductive Psychiatry The Pavilion for Women Texas Children's Hospital Medical Director Perinatal Psychiatry Access Network Assistant Professor Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology Baylor College of Medicine Houston, Texas, USA

Dr. Karen Horst is an assistant professor in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. She specializes in Reproductive Psychiatry, focusing on the interaction between female sex hormones and mental health. Dr. Horst is a native Houstonian. She studied philosophy at Yale University as an undergraduate and completed her medical and residency training at Baylor College of Medicine. She began her residency training in obstetrics and gynecology (from 1997-1999), but her interest in women's mental health led her to complete a residency in psychiatry (2000-2003).

Dr. Horst joined the Baylor faculty after working as a private clinician for the first 16 years of her career, primarily in the Denver metro area of Colorado. In Colorado, she worked collaboratively with obstetrician-gynecologists and women's mental health specialists and served on the Colorado Department of Public Health & the Environment's committee on maternal mortality. She returned to Baylor in 2019 to train the next generation of women's health providers, continue clinical care of patients and participate in scholarly work. She recently published a review paper entitled Menopause and Mental Health in the journal Current Opinion of Ob/Gyn (4/1/2025).

Interests: travel, learning languages, cooking, mind-body activities (exercise, yoga and mindfulness). Prior to medical school, she spent time in Nepal through a year abroad program of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She learned to read and write Nepali and worked in a western medicine clinic located at a Tibetan refugee settlement in the Solu-Khombu region of Nepal.

Events with Dr. Horst


02 April 2025 7:00 PM BTT/BST	Horst, Karen M.D. Reed, Susan D. M.D., MPH, MS, NCMP Wickman, Debra M.D.	The Menopausal Women International Lecture Series