My parents took him for consultations to see if other dentists recommended more procedures to deal with his mouth pain, but it was clear to me this was no longer about dentistry.

“Enough,” I said to my parents. “We need to consider psychiatry.”

Although Takkin had been found to have development delay and fairly severe A.D.H.D. at a young age, he had managed to lead a “normal” life well into his teenage years. He stayed in the school system for as long as he could, participating in work and life-skills programs. He was doing data entry at the airport and held a steady part-time job as a greeter at Trader Joe’s.

His situation was complex, as is often the case for people who fall into the gray space between severe intellectual disability and borderline development delay. He knew he was different from others in their early 20s, recognized that he didn’t really have any friends and that he would never go to college as his two older siblings had. He wanted nothing more than to get his driver’s license. But he was happy at times, especially when he was socializing.

Then he had the dental surgeries, and it was as if a switch in him had been flipped. After a series of root-canal procedures and teeth extractions, he woke up from his final round of procedures and anesthesia, and was never the same.

My parents emigrated from Iran, and my siblings and I were born here. Typical of immigrant families, there’s a cultural disconnect between generations, and this is painfully evident in our conflicting attitudes toward the mental health profession. I am a proponent of its benefits, while my mother and father are skeptics.