This is one of my greatest fears: that I'll be labelled as insane, then taken away and locked up against my will, and when I try to plead sanity, nobody will believe me. Because they "know" I'm insane.
I'm not sure of the law in the US, but I think you have to pose an active danger to yourself or other people for them to detain you, and they can only hold you for short times.
Abuses do happen (which is why you need to talk to your nearest relative and get and advance directive in place) but they're rare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment_interna...
You don't have to be a danger to yourself or others. Only one psychiatrist in the ER has to say that they estimate you are. I'm not aware they have any incentive not to hold you, and increase their liability.
Next, you'll hear they can hold you for 72 hours to evaluate you. That's meaningless. They can hold you for as long as they want to. At the end of 72 hours they can decide to commit you, or even easier, they can bully you into admitting yourself voluntarily, implying they'll commit you otherwise. If you stay "voluntarily" and then try to sign out at a later date, they can again bully you by threatening to take you to court.
If they commit you, you get a court hearing a few weeks later. The rules of the hearing couldn't be simpler: the judge does exactly what the psychiatrist recommends, full stop. After that, appeals become increasingly fewer and further between.
If you're being held 'wrongly' (i.e. you disagree with their assessment) you're entirely on your own to find competent advocates. It can be very difficult, and it can take months before you find someone who wants to make anything happen. Last time I was in, it took me 2 months of working the phone every day, until I somehow managed to reach a high-up lawyer with the state board of oversight. And they just happened to be a nice person who sympathized with my situation.
As I said upthread, you really do not want to get committed if you have state insurance. Private insurance will try to shorten your stay. State insurance leaves you at the hands of the institution. Until I found that lawyer (who had me out after another 2 weeks) the doctors were working on transferring me to a long-term state hospital.
> Unfortunately, justice is glacial, and the law doesn't protect you in the short term.
I got a court order freeing my girlfriend from the first hospital in a day and a half. Then I made the minor mistake of returning to the hospital without a police escort, and they succeeded at sucking her into the system. It's been slow-motion anti-justice ever since.
> Last time I was in, it took me 2 months of working the phone every day, until I somehow managed to reach a high-up lawyer with the state board of oversight. And they just happened to be a nice person who sympathized with my situation.
Thanks for sharing this. My current case is in the court of appeals, and is probably going to take another 3+ months. This is something I can do to hopefully get the treatment providers to stop their palliative treatments more promptly.