You can only be committed against your will if a mental health professional determines you to be an active risk to yourself or others. The key point there is that you have to be evaluated by a mental health professional: and it's not like there are psychologists roaming the streets evaluating strangers. There are only a couple of scenarios that can result in being evaluated: voluntarily (i.e. seeing a therapist) or by some sort of court mandate (if a person accused of a crime displays signs of mental illness, often a forensic psychologist will be asked to evaluate them). Basically getting a stalker committed requires getting them charged with a crime or in some way in front of a judge.
Also keep in mind the bar for committing someone against their will is pretty high. For instance, a person with schizophrenia who is homeless and spends their days talking to voices in their head has a very poor quality of life and is likely to die due to disease, starvation or exposure, but is not suicidal and thus cannot be committed, at least not long term. Sometimes that person can be committed for a few days for evaluation and observation, but no longer.
>voluntarily (i.e. seeing a therapist) or by some sort of court mandate (if a person accused of a crime displays signs of mental illness
So what you are saying is that if I voluntarily seek a therapist, I could end up committed, but if I don't, then I have to have done something bad enough for me to be in front of the judge first. And people wonder why we have such issues with our mental health care system.
(Not that I've done anything that would get me committed, but say I was feeling depressed or something... why would I risk it?)
Getting committed by a therapist you are seeing is very rare, generally only happens if you are actively suicidal, and will tend to only last a few days. The barrier for involuntary committing is very high: I've known several people who engaged in self harm and cutting, told their therapists, and were not committed. The benefits far outweigh the risks.
>And people wonder why we have such issues with our mental health care system.
Genuine question: what would you want to see instead? Would you want it to be impossible to commit patients without consent, and risk more people committing suicide? I understand being frustrated with the system, but I don't see any easy answers.
>Getting committed by a therapist you are seeing is very rare
There are many very rare things people take extreme precaution to avoid.
>Would you want it to be impossible to commit patients without consent, and risk more people committing suicide?
But more people would see therapists and thus less people would commit suicide overall. The choice is between a lower total suicide rate or a lower suicide rate in a subset which therapist are exposed to. And I'm not really surprised therapist opted for the one that is directly more visible.
But, knowing that your therapist can only commit you temporarily if you actively suicidal, do you still think you shouldn't see a therapist if you are depressed? I, for one, am glad my psychiatrist can commit me if I become suicidal; she would literally be saving my life.
I'm not a counselor myself, but I have several in my family. It has been my impression that therapists would not be interested in committing you unless there was an immediate threat to you or someone else.
They would much rather use a treatment method you agreed with. So if you were very depressed they would definitely be concerned. But I don't know if you would get involuntarily committed unless the difference between involuntary commitment and outpatient treatment was a life or death choice. I don't expect you could say much to a therapist that would not stay private unless there was an extremely good reason.
>I'm not a counselor myself, but I have several in my family. It has been my impression that therapists would not be interested in committing you unless there was an immediate threat to you or someone else.
The threat of me using a gun, no matter how unlikely it actually is, leads to me being banned from having a gun in quite a lot of places. Also, people will often not accurate take into account the chance of something happening when deciding how they should act.
> So what you are saying is that if I voluntarily seek a therapist, I could end up committed, but if I don't, then I have to have done something bad enough for me to be in front of the judge first.
It depends where you are. That's not true for the UK, for example, where a variety of people have powers to detain under the mental health act. There's a bunch of checks and balances built in to the system so while it's not perfect it's very far away from the misinformation some people are spreading in this thread.
Also keep in mind the bar for committing someone against their will is pretty high. For instance, a person with schizophrenia who is homeless and spends their days talking to voices in their head has a very poor quality of life and is likely to die due to disease, starvation or exposure, but is not suicidal and thus cannot be committed, at least not long term. Sometimes that person can be committed for a few days for evaluation and observation, but no longer.