"I write a journal," he says. "Sometimes, I write poems. Sometimes, I paint."
To do that, the teenager needs help, and he has received it. From expected sources - like his father Michael, who uprooted himself to move from Texas to New Jersey in search of better medical care, rehabilitation and schooling for his son.
He also has received help from strangers who worked together to pull Cody back from the depths of a destructive if understandable depression. They were led by pediatric psychiatrist who believed artistic expression could help her patient.
"Cody has talents," says Diane Kaufman, who also is a clinical faculty member at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark. "He is an artist."
Kaufman has seen the young man when he has been in the grip of mental illness, hearing voices telling him to destroy himself. Because of his limited mobility, Cody can't do much to act on those urges, but he did gnaw away at the tips of the fingers of one hand.
He clearly needed a lot of help," says Kaufman.
She says she did what she could as his psychiatrist but, when she learned one of his worst episodes was related to the crash of his computer, a machine he used to write a journal, Kaufman turned to her other passion, art.
|
