“It definitely resonates with Congress, as it should,” said Robert L. Lynch, president of Americans for the Arts, an advocacy group.

At the medical center here, though, the focus is on getting better, not getting votes. Arts therapy patients have all suffered a traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder. Organizers say the monthlong program helps them cope with haunting memories, disabilities and the future.

“A lot of this population has trouble verbalizing what they have been through,” Ms. Walker said.

The focus at first is on painting masks, each treated as a blank slate that helps a patient explore wounds and identity. Masks line walls and a paint-spattered table in the bright therapy room. Some are fractured, others macabre, a few peaceful.

“I was kind of lost,” Chris Stowe, a retired Marine who studied oil painting and learned how to play the ukulele in the program, said in a telephone interview.

After deployments including Iraq and Afghanistan, he suffered night terrors and insomnia, he said. “I found this wonderful thing that is art.”

Rusty Noesner, a former member of the Navy SEALs, was injured in Afghanistan. “You are going 100 miles per hour, and after serving you are slamming on the brakes,” he said by telephone. “The artistic process gives you a pause to start thinking about how you should be living your life now.”