Yorkville University’s Dr. April Crable is celebrating the publication of her second book – a counselling text that centers around women’s counselling and faith. 

Published by Kendall Hunt in January, Counseling Women: Evidence-Based Treatment with Faith Integration is billed as a “practical tool for Christian professionals” that covers topics ranging from marriage, motherhood and divorce, to self-identity, anxiety, and the female brain, just to name a few. 

“It’s all about women, women’s issues, empowering women…and all the significant clinical mental health issues that women experience,” Crable said of the text, which was co-authored by Patricia A. Hinkley, Jama L. Davis and Anita M. Knight Kuhnley. 

“The faith-based part of it was important to us, because faith is so instrumental in mental health for people, and it’s often something that gets missed, so we definitely wanted to emphasize that.”  

A Louisiana native, Crable is an experienced distance educator who currently works at both Yorkville University, where she’s been teaching the Counselling Skills and Competencies and Applying Interventions courses for the Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology program for the last year, and Liberty University Online, a private Christian school based out of Virginia.

She’s also a licensed counsellor specializing in teletherapy, crisis and trauma counselling, substance abuse, ethics, and sex offender treatment and currently co-owns  Fruition Counselling and Consulting Services – a Scottsdale, Arizona-based private practice that specializes in teletherapy services – with her husband, Dr. Timothy Crable.

Her first book, TeleMental Health Private Practice Start Up: Practical Insights for the Ethical Practitioner, detailed the couple’s experience taking their brick-and-mortar private practice and transforming it into a successful telemental health counselling service utilizing ethical and practical best practices.

“We made that move about four years ago, when telemental health wasn’t what it is today, because we wanted to try to do something different and have some flexibility,” she said, noting that the couple now split their time between Scottsdale and Houston, Texas with their 15-year-old daughter. 

“People weren’t as sure about it before the pandemic, but I’ve been a strong voice in trying to push tele-mental health to other practitioners for a long time now. One of the only positives of the pandemic, if there are any, is how it changed the face of mental health.”  

While passionate about her chosen career now, counselling wasn’t always Crable’s dream job – in fact, she grew up thinking she was destined for a career in law. 

Inspired by her grandparents, who dedicated their lives to fostering disadvantaged children in their home, Crable majored in Criminal Justice for her undergrad studies, with the ultimate goal of one day acting as a child advocate. 

“Being raised with them and seeing the kinds of things they experienced – and also seeing the advocacy that my grandparents did – was very important to me. I wanted to somehow keep that up and fight the system as an attorney,” she explained. 

“It wasn’t until I finished my degree that I decided I wanted to go into counselling, instead, and do advocacy work with them in that field rather than going the law route…It felt like a good path for me, and that’s what I’ve been doing since.” 

While becoming a published author was likewise never a life goal, Crable said she’s nevertheless felt truly rewarded by the experience and is keen to begin work on her third book. 

“When I got into counselling, I never even thought about becoming an author or editor – it was always about doing the actual work. But the more we started working on it together and learning all of these women’s stories, the more I realized what an amazing experience it was,” she said. 

“I think the word for me would be ‘blessed’ to have been a part of this opportunity and have it present itself to me. It was a privilege to be a part of that work.” 

Crable and her Counseling Women co-authors are now working on a series of videos to accompany the e-book version of the text. In March, they plan to get together to record the segments, which will include clinical interventions, demonstrations, and interviews. 

They’re also now in talks about publishing a new edition of the text, which will include some of the topics that didn’t fit in the first, such as sex trafficking. 

In the end, Crable said her hope is that both professional counsellors, students and lay readers of the text, alike, walk away with a better understanding of women’s issues as a whole. 

“And not just the clinical issues – we also talk about parenting, we also talk about the idea of what women’s roles are and their voices and how oftentimes they feel isolated and maybe not encouraged in different things,” she explained. 

“So, I would hope they get a picture of that, but also see how they can contribute to the empowerment of women.” 

Learn more about Counseling Women: Evidence-Based Treatment with Faith Integration here.