Veena Dinavahi > Quotes

“Who gets to decide what is normal? With respect to the mental health system, every diagnosis of mental illness assumes a certain baseline of normalcy. With borderline personality disorder, one of the symptoms is excessive risk-taking, in areas such as spending habits and sexual behavior. Excessive to whom? Based on whose value system? Whose environment? A social risk for a young white man from the affluent suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut, might present very differently than a social risk for a Black woman raised in inner-city Baltimore. More important, our perceptions of acceptable risk from these two circumstances vary greatly based on our own upbringing and biases.”
― Veena Dinavahi, The True Happiness Company: A Memoir