Mrs. Sarah Turpen is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in the state of Kentucky. Following completion of an undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice from Eastern Kentucky University and several years working in that field, Mrs. Turpen decided to return to school to pursue a change in career choice that better aligned with her strengths and desire to help others. In 2014, she graduated with her Master’s in Social Work from the University of Kentucky and became independently licensed in 2017. Currently, she is a doctoral candidate at the University of Kentucky, working toward her Doctor of Social Work.
Mrs. Turpen works as a social worker at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Lexington, KY, with the Mental Health Intensive Case Management (MHICM) program. MHICM is a community mental health service delivery that increases access to care for veterans with serious mental illness (SMI). In previous social work employment, Mrs. Turpen has been an outpatient mental health clinician, a mobile therapist, and a behavior health consultant at a primary care clinic.
The SMI population has been the target of Mrs. Turpen’s social work and it is her passion. The services she currently provides to SMI veterans are individual therapy, group therapy, and intensive case management. Mrs. Turpen is trained in Social Skills Training (SST) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Psychosis (CBTp) and is able to utilize these skills in her current work. Her research interests include SMI and the military/veteran population, with her capstone project aimed at improving engagement in services for the SMI veteran population.