The Queen’s Medical Center has kicked off its first arts-based healing program to help children with mental illness and behavioral health issues build coping and other life skills using art as a form of therapy.

Children in the hospital’s 28-bed Family Treatment Center are helping to create murals themed around Hawaiian values in the hallways, lobby and patient rooms through a partnership between Queen’s and Kamehameha Schools, which are each investing $77,000 in the therapeutic project over the next year.

“We were having a lot of troubled kids coming here very angry, doing a lot of property damage,” said Laurie MacAfee, nurse manager at the center. “The idea is if they were invested and they were part of the art itself and involved daily with the process of building it … they’ll feel a sense of purpose.”

The center provides psychiatric treatment for children between the ages of 5 and 17, most of whom have experienced severe trauma including sexual, physical or verbal abuse or have issues with drug use or some type of psychosis. Many are homeless or in foster care, with a high percentage of Native Hawaiians. Patients stay anywhere from five days to a year, depending on their condition. At one point 20 percent of the center’s pediatric and adolescent patients were sex-trafficking victims, MacAfee said.

“Usually the underlying issue is trauma,” which triggers behavioral disorders that prevent children from being able to function in a normal environment, said MacAfee, who has seen the average census grow over the past year to about 23 from 19. “They’re committing misdemeanors, and there are a lot of runaways. We stay so full.”

Dr. Shaylin Chock, the center’s child and adolescent psychiatrist, said demand continues to grow with limited resources in the community.

“It’s definitely not decreasing. We do not have enough resources,” she said. “Sometimes we have to send some of our local kids to mainland treatment programs because we’re not able to provide them the specific type of treatments they need here in the islands. It’s a big problem.”

Queen’s has contracted 808 Urban, a nonprofit arts organization started by graffiti artist John “Prime” Hina, to teach patients about Hawaiian cultural values and healing through art. Dubbed “The Piko Project,” the goal of the art therapy program, which started Wednesday, is to empower children with positive and meaningful self-expression.

“The ideas of colors and kids being able to use art as a way of expression, it brightens being here in a locked unit,” said Diane Paloma, Queen’s director of Native Hawaiian health. “One of the ideas is that if they are able to paint it themselves, they take a little bit of ownership. It can help heal them in a sense, tell stories and have them think about someplace other than being stuck here. It can uplift them.”

Chock added, “It’s bringing that joy back. Having that spark was a really nice thing to have back on our unit.”