&gt; <i>They can&#x27;t just commit people because they talked to them and decided hey lock that guy up.</i><p>They&#x27;re free to assess you however they want and then use that as an excuse. Who is going to argue with and stop them? The judge? Your lawyer? Someone else who lacks a medical degree and &quot;psychiatric expertise&quot;?<p>There are so many ways it can go wrong for you. Maybe they thought you said something you didn&#x27;t. I was once accused of making suicidal statements that I never did - not even a matter of being misheard, but completely making up things that I had never said. Maybe you just seem twitchy or distracted or they think they see signs of some other symptom. Maybe they just decide to lie because they think they know best.<p>I&#x27;m not claiming that every psych is out to get you, just that you really roll the dice when you talk to an unknown one. Hence the comparison to dealing with police. From my own experiences and people I&#x27;ve known, it gets worse when you aren&#x27;t involved of your own free will or aren&#x27;t the one directly paying for your own treatment.<p>In your case, I&#x27;d be curious whether whichever working clinical psychiatrist that was assigned to this person also felt as strongly that they should be committed, and had similar lack of success doing so?<p>Some non-anecdotal evidence either way would be more convincing, but this is the impression I&#x27;ve gotten considering the uniformity of experiences I&#x27;ve observed. Only one person I can think of actually felt they were helped by and had a positive experience with a psychiatric institution, and that was through a college health service. The only paper[1] I could find on it reports that &quot;retrospectively, between 33% and 81% of patients regard the admission as justified and&#x2F;or the treatment as beneficial,&quot; which is a uselessly broad range and could be used to conclude either way.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;onlinelibrary.wiley.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;10.1111&#x2F;j.1600-0447.2006.00823.x&#x2F;abstract" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;onlinelibrary.wiley.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;10.1111&#x2F;j.1600-0447.2006....</a>