“I enjoy helping people to increase their self-awareness and learn new skills. I recognize that they will improve their quality of life by targeting underlying issues to promote positive, meaningful, and long-lasting changes.”  – Apple James

Koonteera “Apple” James is a Licensed Professional Counselor who joined Samaritan’s clinical team in 2024. Apple counsels adults, children, adolescents, couples, and families both in-person at Samaritan’s Sewickley and Gibsonia offices as well as via teletherapy. 

Apple utilizes a strength-based and holistic approach to treat and collaborate with her clients. Her clinical experiences include working with grief and loss, depression, anxiety, adjustment disorder, trauma-related struggles, stress management, life transitions, Autism, and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). Moreover, she excels at helping people work through relationship and family conflicts such as divorce, co-parenting, and parent-child conflicts.

 
Apple incorporates a variety of strategies such as Attachment Therapy, Emotion-Focused Therapy, Eco-Systemic Structural Therapy, Solution-Focused Therapy, the Gottman Method, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Mindfulness into her work with clients.

Prior working at Samaritan, Apple was an Outpatient Therapist at New Directions Mental Health providing Individual, Couple and Family Therapy. Her experience as an Outpatient Therapist and a Family Based Mental Health therapist and supervisor at Wesely Family Services has helped to cultivate her trauma-informed, client-centered, and non-judgmental approach. Apple has also served as an Adjunct Professor at Geneva College in the college’s Master of Arts in Counseling Program since 2022. 

Apple is originally from Thailand. She received her a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Thammasat University in Thailand.  She graduated from Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, with a Master of Arts in Counseling with a concentration in Couple, Marriage, and Family Counseling. Outside of work, she enjoys cooking, being outdoors, traveling, and learning about new places and cultures. She also spends her free time volunteering and connecting with her beloved family and friends.

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