Business Profile: Trinity Wellness Center

Trinity Wellness Center in Leland helps bring mental health and physical well-being together.

It’s well documented that our mental health and physical well-being go hand in hand, and that’s what Trinity Wellness Center in Leland is all about. The word “holistic” is more than a trendy buzzword at the practice’s Leland facility, which opened in 2020 in the midst of the COVID pandemic — a time filled with stress for everyone.

The center advertises “a unique variety of treatments and services” that blend innovative methods from Asia and the West for people ranging from those with serious mental-health issues to those who just sense that there’s a way to feel better for their own good and those around them.

For Chris McKinley, a physician assistant who sees patients in the Leland office, the key is to successfully treat root causes, not just symptoms.

“We do what’s called functional psychiatry,” says McKinley, a former EMT and Navy SEAL combat medic. “Today, medicine turns into symptom chasing. You put a bandage on the problem. We are a functional or precision office and a place for wellness. That’s why we call our practice Trinity. It’s body, mind and spirit.”

Services go beyond typical counseling sessions and, depending on the patient, might involve hormone replacement therapy; intravenous ketamine to treat depression, migraines or PTSD; Botox for mental health; treatments for memory issues; acupuncture and vitamin injections. Patients also hear strong messages on better lifestyle choices such as improving diet, like avoiding too many carbohydrates and processed foods.

In many cases, early steps involve lab work and counseling to determine how to stop the cycle of taking so many prescription medications that often domino as new meds are needed to treat the side effects of the earlier ones. For patients in genuine need of prescription medication, the goal is the best drug and lowest dosage to treat the symptoms, while the Trinity team works on ways to attack the root causes.

Originally from northeast Ohio, McKinley did multiple tours in Africa and Afghanistan as well as government contract work after leaving the Navy. Before he enlisted, he was a paramedic and grew up with parents who ran a natural food store.

He describes a strong bond with Dr. R. Thomas Mathew, the psychiatrist and medical director who founded the original Trinity Wellness Center in Wilmington in 2005. The center also has an office in Hillsborough.

On the center’s website, Mathew notes how he got involved in functional, holistic medicine to help his wife address years of debilitating joint pain, and it was this approach beyond the norms of traditional medicine that helped her the most. Mathew said it took 15 years to discover her immune system was reacting to mold.

McKinley understands such challenges. He faced spinal surgery after a severe injury in 2003, and doctors said he might spend his life in a wheelchair. Like a true SEAL, he didn’t accept that answer, went through successful rehab and studied at Cleveland State University and the Cleveland Clinic to become a physician assistant.

McKinley met Mathew in 2019. He went through a tryout process that led to him learning various aspects of the practice and working with Mathew to develop the idea to open the wellness center in fast-growing Leland in 2020.

The center accepts most major health insurance plans and Medicare patients. The center does not accept Medicaid patients.

Trinity Wellness Center
1003 Old Waterford Way, Suite 1C, Leland, (910) 769-5004; thetrinitywellnesscenter.com