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April Westfall, PhD

Director of Clinical Services
Licensed Psychologist & Senior Staff Therapist, University City & Wynnewood Offices
215-382-6680 ext. 3122

Dr. April Westfall is first and foremost a psychologist and therapist. Although she currently has senior management responsibilities as Director of Clinical Services at Council for Relationships (CFR), she firmly believes that the heart and soul of what she does professionally will always be her therapeutic work. As such, she maintains and active and full clinical practice of adult individuals and couples at both our University City and Wynnewood Offices.

Dr. Westfall's areas of special clinical expertise include working with the problems of anxiety and depression, including bi-polar disorder, and she is especially adept at helping couples to cope with the impact of these problematic mood states and in helping them to better manage them. She is also a trained EMDR practitioner, who uses this specialized approach to help resolve traumas that impede clients in their day-to-day lives and relationships. Dr. Westfall has acquired a national reputation for her work in helping couples deal with the challenging problem of relational infidelity, and has written numerous professional articles and chapters on this topic.

Dr. Westfall began her professional education at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, where she received her doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology. She was first introduced to couples therapy during her psychology internship at the Family Study Unit, affiliated with Stanford University in Palo Alto. She also added sex therapy to her clinical areas of expertise by training with a pioneering group of sex educators and therapists at the University of CA Medical School in San Francisco. Dr. Westfall later moved to Philadelphia to train at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic and was hired as Inpatient Unit Director, where she served for the next five years. Accordingly, working with Salvador Minuchin and the other originators of structural family therapy still remains one of the highlights of her career.

Since coming to CFR, April has been a full-time senior therapist in the University City and, more recently, Wynnewood offices, as well as a teacher and supervisor. She has held academic appointments within the Departments of Psychiatry of the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jefferson University Medical School as Clinical Asst. Professor. Over the years, she has functioned in several different administrative roles at CFR: first, as Office Director of University City, then as the Associate Director of the Training Program at CFR, and finally, as Director of Clinical Services, the position she holds today. In addition, she has served as a member of the LGBT Task Force and the Center for Families in Transition, helping couples to cope with the painful challenges of separation and divorce, so that they might better co-parent their children. Finally, Dr. Westfall has served for many years as the Ethics Editor for the PA Association of Marriage and Family Therapy's newsletter, Perspectives, and her articles on ethical and legal issues as pertains to the practice of couples/family therapy are regularly featured.

April Westfall, PhD, can be reached at 215-382-6680 ext. 3122.

Tip of the Week Article Written By Dr. April Westfall:

• A Few Words of Advice on Maintaining a Loving Partnership
• Takeaways from an Early Fall Vacation

Media Engagements by Dr. April Westfall:
KYW News Radio - Census Shows More People Unmarried But Living Together
Dr. April Westfall talks about the climbing rate of cohabitating couples. 5/21/11