Some programs are built from good intentions. Command Counseling Center was built from tragedy.
When Marie Gumá responded with a clinical team to provide mental health support in the aftermath of the condominium collapse Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, the suicide of Boynton Beach (Fla) Fire Rescue Lieutenant Alvis Fernandez, and the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida – not from a distance, but from within the agencies that bore the weight – she saw something the broader mental health industry had long looked past: a catastrophic, unconscionable gap between the psychological needs of first responders and the services available to them.
Gumá did not write a white paper about it. She built something. The Command Counseling Center is not a referral service. It is not a hotline. It is a fully funded, barrier-free mental health infrastructure embedded directly inside fire-rescue departments within Florida — no appointments, no insurance requirements, no waitlists. Culturally competent clinicians placed where firefighters are and available around the clock when critical incidents strike.Marie understood what the research confirms and what the industry too often forgets: the first obstacle to treatment for first responders is not willingness – it is access, and the bone-deep cultural distrust that comes from being sent to someone who simply does not understand the world you live in.
Her model addresses this through a five-part framework: individual and family counseling, 24/7 critical-incident clinical support, policy consulting and peer-support integration, training for employees and their families, and annual mental health screenings. Each pillar reflects something rare — a clinician who thought not just therapeutically, but systemically, asking how an entire culture changes, not just how one person heals.
What makes Marie’s achievement even more remarkable is the terrain she navigated to build it. Command Counseling exists because she brought together government agencies, union leadership, department administration, and rank-and-file firefighters – groups that rarely agree on anything – around a shared belief that the people who run into burning buildings deserve the same level of care they give to everyone else.