Mental health funds for Pulse survivors are starting to dry up.

Clients’ insurance will be billed, those without must pay

Three years after the Pulse nightclub shooting, the Orlando United Assistance Center — the main agency helping survivors of the tragedy — vows to continue providing mental-health counseling, despite an end to the federal grant funding for the effort.

But elsewhere, the assistance for those traumatized by the event is drying up. At the LGBT + Center Orlando, there is now a three-week wait for new clients, and another program has stopped accepting new clients.

“Unfortunately, the ongoing opportunities for funding continue to diminish,” said Charlotte Melton, vice president of the Mental Health Association of Central Florida. “We know the community still cares — we just got a grant from the Orlando Come Out With Pride. But we’re … having to ask people already receiving help to [work toward less-frequent appointments] where they can.”

The mental health association has partnered with a network of providers to offer free services to anyone affected by the June 12, 2016, shooting, which left 49 people dead and more than 60 wounded.

About 140 have sought help through the program.

At The Center — also known as the LGBT+ Center Orlando — mental health counseling is offered two days a week for walk-in clients and by appointment.

“We are still seeing people who have been impacted by Pulse,” said Joél Morales, The Center’s director of operations. “The bad part is that they have to wait. So if they’re in crisis, we try to direct them to other resources.”

The Center offers counseling on Tuesdays and Fridays, with the first three sessions free. After that, the agency tries to refer the person to a mental-health provider in the community.

But Central Florida has long suffered from a lack of low-cost and free mental-health assistance — a gap exacerbated by the needs from the Pulse attack.

It’s one reason the Orlando United Assistance Center, opened in the days after the attack, has used much of an $8.5 million federal anti-terrorism grant to provide counseling to some 381 people, including survivors of the tragedy, friends and family of those who died, and emergency personnel and medi

cal staff who worked with victims.

That grant money out Sept. 30.

“Its purpose was to help us in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy — during that time of crisis — and it gave us the opportunity to develop a system of care. It was never intended to be a long-range,” said Ray Larsen, vice president at the Heart of Florida United Way, which is managing the assistance center. “But we’ve been meeting with our provider partners and there’s a commitment by everyone … that at the end of the grant, they will continue to serve those clients.”

But while the service is now free, providers will begin billing insurance for clients who have it and asking runs

others who can afford to pay out of pocket to do so.

“But if they don’t and they can’t, they will still receive those services,” Larsen said.

The assistance center also will continue to help new clients directly impacted by Pulse, even if they can’t pay.

“We know from research that it could take up to seven years before an individual requests assistance,” said OUAC director Michael Aponte. “We cannot force people and say. ‘Now is when you have to get the service.’ At first they may think, ‘I am strong enough to handle this on my own.’ We have to consider that in the Hispanic and AfricanAmerican culture, seeking mental health care still carries a stigma.”