Inner healing requires hope and trust in God’s love for us

Catholic mental health professional advocates for spiritual growth and medical intervention

Dr. Christin McIntyre, Catholic psychiatrist, led a Lenten mission on mental health at St. Paul’s Parish in Nampa. Father Justin Brady, pastor of St. Paul’s, is pictured with Dr. McIntyre. (ICR photo/Emily Woodham)

By Emily Woodham

Staff Writer

As options become more available in mental health practices, knowing which therapist or resource will be most helpful can be challenging.

If someone is Catholic, there can be a fear of getting help from someone who does not share Catholic beliefs.

But Dr. Christin McIntyre, a psychiatrist and therapist with more than 20 years of experience, doesn’t want people to fear getting the help they need.

“As long as you know your faith, you’re going to be fine,” Dr. McIntyre said. Just as bank tellers learn to tell counterfeit money by studying authentic bills, she explained, Catholics will know if something is unhealthy or untrue by knowing what the Church teaches. “There will be some therapists who just aren’t on the same page, and you may not be able to work with them. But a lot of times, you still can.”

A convert to Catholicism, Dr. McIntyre trained in psychology based on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. She has also had training with the John Paul II Healing Center, founded by Dr. Bob Schuchts. She and her husband are Benedictine Oblates of Mount Angel Abbey in Oregon where she leads retreats that draw on her experience in clinical psychiatry, spiritual healing and spiritual warfare. Dr. McIntyre and her family moved from Oregon to Coeur d’Alene in 2021. They attend St. Joan of Arc Parish in Post Falls and St. Stanislaus Parish in Rathdrum.

At the beginning of April, she led a Lenten mission at St. Paul’s Parish in Nampa. She also spoke with a group of women at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Boise. During her talks, she cautioned against assuming that mental illness could be healed purely through spiritual means.

“Bipolar and many other psychiatric disorders are biological in nature. They may need to be treated with medication,” she said. She uses psychotherapy to help many of her patients, she explained, but an illness that is biologically rooted may require medication to stabilize. There is a genetic component to mental illness. In addition, some injuries and illicit drug use can also lead to mental disorders.

“Especially in young people using marijuana, it can trigger psychotic disorders. It’s not always reversible, especially if there’s a genetic vulnerability,” she said.

Even with an illness that requires medication, there are things people can do spiritually that will improve their mental health and well-being. The spiritual battle is real and not a battle we need to fear.

“The enemy is not going to work any harder than he has to,” she explained. “If we have a vulnerability to an anxiety disorder, for example, which might be genetic, and especially if we’ve experienced something very bad in our lives that has set us up for a post-traumatic kind of a situation, all that can be a source of intrusive thoughts. The ‘both-and’ concept works well for this: Sometimes, intrusive thoughts are just from us. Other times, it’s from the enemy.”

Dr. McIntyre said the best way to discern thoughts is to consider where a thought is leading. “You need to ask, ‘Is this leading me toward God or away from God?’”

She explained that praying with hope helps overcome unhealthy intrusive thoughts, noting that Kyle Clement, who teaches about spiritual warfare, says, “Worry negates prayer.” This confused her at first because she found herself driven to prayer when she was worried. However, Clement explained that worry often comes from things we are imagining that are fed by fear.

“When we pray in fear, we allow those fears to draw us away from God,” she said. Praying in hope instead of fear is much better “because hope presumes trust. Hope presumes that we trust God has the big picture in mind and knows what’s best. His will is always for our salvation. Whatever he permits to happen to us has some salvific purpose. It’s designed in some way for our good,” she said.

Dr. McIntyre explained that when we pray in hope, we discern what we desire for ourselves and others. This conversation with God about our inmost longings purifies our desires, helping us to distinguish what is healthy and what is not. That prayerful, hope-filled conversation “changes your soul. It also benefits the person you’re praying for,” she said.

Nonetheless, she noted that it is best to follow Jesus’ example in the Garden of Gethsemane and ask for God’s will to be done in all things. “This is also saying to the Lord, ‘If You want something better, then I want that instead.’”

It’s also important not to lose hope when things go wrong.

“Whenever we try to do something good, the enemy notices . . . he will try to do anything to divert us from that.” However, the difficulties we encounter when fulfilling God’s desires often help us grow. Dr. McIntyre likened such opportunities for growth to gold coins from heaven: “Suffering is the coin of the realm,” she said.

Uniting our suffering with Christ and offering it for a particular event or person is an “opportunity we shouldn’t miss,” Dr. McIntyre explained. “The ultimate offering is to thank God for it. That gratitude really expresses trust in Him.”

Dr. McIntyre’s talks for St. Paul’s Lenten mission can be found on their YouTube page: “St. Paul’s Catholic Church Nampa." Dr. McIntyre was recently featured on the “Restore the Glory” podcast with Dr. Bob Schuchts and Jake Khym in episodes 121 and 126.

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