When you call 9-1-1 because you're feeling suicidal, the most likely outcome is that you will be detained against your will†, probably for several days --- first in a hospital ER, and then in a mental health facility. If you show any hesitation about submitting to this process, you'll be coerced into compliance, usually by the police. The police will have guns.

It does nobody any good to sugarcoat the unpleasantness. The experience of the emergency mental health process, or stories about it, shock people. That shock deters many from seeking help. So people should know up-front, preferably before they even need to consider emergency care, that getting care will suck a lot.

It also has a good chance at saving their lives.

There probably aren't many people on HN who will agree more strenuously than I do that emergency mental health care in the US needs a drastic overhaul, and that's a conversation I'm willing to have. But we cannot responsibly suggest that we can motivate that reform by telling the mentally ill to go on strike against the system. Many people in need of emergency mental care will return to normal function in days or weeks, even when the safe space that gives them room to recover is unpleasant, the doctors are remote and unhelpful, and the police are at the door.

† (There are subtle differences between this outcome and "involuntary commitment", but I would understand anyone who suggested that they're distinctions without differences; perhaps the best term to use for this would be "temporary involuntary commitment").