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December 16, 2024

Meet Kelly DiTurno, MSSA, MNO, LSW

Kelly DiTurno joined the Hopewell team in February 2024. She brings a trauma-informed life course perspective to the person-centered care environment at Hopewell. She specializes in creating group psychoeducation experiences using various treatment modalities to help residents reflect on how the tools they are learning impact their ability to sit with difficult experiences in their life and treatment. Kelly noted, “Using language to empower others is great, but providing opportunities for residents to that same language to empower themselves is what really leads to change, in my opinion.” She encourages her clients to maintain a journal/care diary during treatment as a meaningful tool to narrativize their growth in the future.

Hands-On Involvement is in her Genes

The biggest influences on Kelly’s adult life and career have been access to great public education and learning how to be a caregiver for family from family members. Her grandmother Juliet’s example of being a lifelong caregiver informed her choice to study gerontology and social work. As a granddaughter in a family of Italian and Irish immigrants, the tradition of multi-generational living and care inspired Kelly’s interest in developing programming and supporting programs that met the needs of family members living, working and aging together.

Like her grandmother, Kelly attended public high school in Solon, Ohio, where she developed confidence in her leadership skills that allowed her to find purpose and meaning in her college career. At Miami University of Ohio, she developed an interdisciplinary academic degree allowing her to receive her BA in several overlapping areas of special interest: American studies, sociology and gerontology. This course of study helped her understand the role of location, class and culture in impacting health outcomes across the life course.

When asked how she ended up in a mental health career, Kelly noted, “I always assumed I would end up in academia because it felt like the only place to have the hard conversations I wanted to have. Then a professor of mine who knew me very well told me, ‘You don’t have to stay in school forever because you like school. You could be a very well-informed yoga instructor, for instance, if that’s how you make the most impact.’ That was revolutionary to me!” She remembered, “Later, when I was considering graduate programs, I pictured how my efforts would both impact my community and provide me access to community, which I really wanted more than anything. I decided that I did not want to write papers that would sit on a shelf. Instead, I chose to select a program focused on service delivery.”

Aligning with that value of service, Kelly attended the Mandel School of Social Work at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She completed an Aging-in-Place Interprofessional Leadership Practicum which engaged students in both theory and hands-on practice in the greater Cleveland area. In this transdisciplinary program, Kelly was one of many students from CWRU’s Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry and Social Work who collaborated with community members and clinical preceptors at the Veterans' Association (VA) and Jewish Family Services Administration of Cleveland (JFSA). They provided in-home care consultation and social support to Holocaust survivors aging in place while completing coursework in the impact of trauma across the life course.

Kelly notes that one of the highlights of her CWRU career was an immersive study abroad program in Amsterdam, in which she studied Integrated Dual Disorder Treatment for Inpatient Settings (IDDT). This evidence-based practice improves the quality of life for people with co-occurring severe mental illness and substance use disorders by combining substance abuse services with mental health services. The program also focused on the cultural underpinnings of social tolerance and medical friendship that have allowed medication assisted treatment (MAT), and physician assisted suicide debt recovery and forgiveness policies to succeed in The Netherlands. Kelly also had the opportunity to travel throughout Europe for the first time during the program which she describes as life-altering.

Kelly completed her dual Master of Social Work and Nonprofit Administration at CWRU in spring 2019. Since then, she has served on transdisciplinary clinical care teams providing acute crisis response, adult behavioral health care, and death, grief, and loss support to patients and families across Northeast Ohio.

Applying Lived Experience as a Family Caregiver

Kelly spent much of her mid-20s to mid-30s learning from the men and women in her family how to be a caregiver. She applied that experience directly to her work after the deaths of her uncle in 2018, grandmother in 2022 and her father in 2023. Kelly’s aunts, uncles and mother all collaborated to support these three in what Kelly notes was an awesome labor of love. In the latter part of that time, Kelly was working as a grief counselor at Hospice of the Western Reserve. In late 2022, Kelly began providing caregiver and resident support group discussions at assisted living facilities in greater Cleveland, the first of which was Light of Hearts Villa in Bedford, Ohio, where she had worked and her grandmother had lived until she died.

Kelly notes that developing and presenting the content of her caregiving groups allowed her to connect to her father, who was a doting and precise caregiver to his own mother. In the days before her father’s sudden illness and death the next year, she learned about his project of tracing and understanding his own family history. “Life narratives are very important to my work. I’d love to finish compiling family stories. My brothers and I plan to eventually visit Italy in honor of my dad and grandmother to meet extended family,” she said.

Working with People with Mental Illness

When you talk to Kelly, you can’t help but be struck by how articulate she is, and this helps inform her work with residents. “I have found that I can utilize interpersonal connection, especially through language, to help remind them that they are not defined by their worst decisions.” she stated. “I also write letters of medical necessity for treatment in which I use language to empower other people. This is my calling right now.”

She continued, “I try to provide an open, neuro-affirming environment in therapy that allows residents to experiment with what makes them most comfortable. For example, I provide a lot of sensory tools such as stimming toys, blankets, and softer lighting, which allow residents to meet their sensory and biological needs so they can engage more fully in care. If it is more comfortable to walk and talk out of the office, then we do that, and incorporate the natural beauty at Hopewell as needed. Walk and talk therapy has evidence behind it that you can deal with hard to process thoughts more easily. These approaches help when residents have atypical nervous systems.”

A Hopewell Moment

When asked about a “great day” at Hopewell, Kelly remembered gathering on April, 8, 2024 with Hopewell residents, staff and their families to watch the solar eclipse, “The eclipse was such a humbling moment to witness as a community. In our Grief Processing Group, when we discuss non-death loss, we often talk about grieving the big monocultural moments that are so rare now, where everyone is bearing witness to the same event at the same time. Whether we are distracted by our devices (myself included) or simply too overwhelmed with grief to remain engaged in our communities before we all arrived at Hopewell, I think most of us agree that the slow, intentional pace of the farm allows us all to be more present for moments like this.”

When asked to describe the event, Kelly laughed, “We all went outside and ate sun chips and moon pies and were goofing around until the eclipse started. When people started shushing each other, I thought, oh no, will some of us miss it? Astoundingly, every person present, kiddos and adults, fell silent as the eclipse happened, completely silent. It was one of the coolest things I’ve shared with others, and it happened at work!”

Interests and Hobbies

Kelly has been involved in community theater, sketch and improv comedy and writing narrative nonfiction and poetry since high school. Currently she prefers to enjoy the art her friends are making in the community and supports them by producing, developing and promoting projects in greater Cleveland that center issues at the intersection of class and disability. A fun fact about Kelly is that she has a black belt in karate and has recently taken up boxing.

Outside of Hopewell, Kelly advocates for elder care policy and facilitates caregiving support groups for aging adults and their families. Since the recent losses in her family, she has been relishing time with her mother, twin brother, big sister and baby brother, her favorite people on earth. Kelly spends her weekends attending live music events, supporting local artists, writing, and playing with her nieces June and Ada. Some of her travel goals in the next few years are to visit more east and south Asian countries, the Mediterranean and Middle East, and to encourage her nieces to see as much of the world as they can.

Thank you, Kelly, for everything you do for Hopewell!