There is plenty to moralize in your post, but I'll refrain; I'd like to factualize instead.
In many parts of the the U.S., it is possible to be forcibly admitted to a mental unit. In California, for instance, this process is called a 5150 (named for the law that allows it), and authorizes a 72-hour hold for psychiatric care. (It is also possible to authorize a 14 day hold, called a 5250.) This is not unique to California. She almost certainly did have to stay after the first night.
I want to address as well your comment as to "thoughts of suicide". The terminology for this that's used in the literature is called a "suicidal ideation", and they run the gamut from thinking about it for a moment all the way up to making plans. A suicidal ideation is (obviously) a risk factor for suicide, but is not at all a guarantee that a patient will make an attempt on their life. (To hammer the point home, there are plenty of other risk factors that we do not hospitalize for; many patients with personality disorders will try to take their own life at some point, but we obviously cannot hospitalize them all at all times, nor should we!)
Neither I, you, nor anyone outside of this person's care network will have access to her files, so it's not reasonable for me to make a judgement call on whether she should have been placed on suicide watch or not. Given only the data provided, though, it is certainly not a slam dunk that she needed to be admitted.
I appreciate the agony you must have witnessed in someone who needed urgent psychiatric care ... but the experience that you witnessed is not universal.
In many parts of the the U.S., it is possible to be forcibly admitted to a mental unit. In California, for instance, this process is called a 5150 (named for the law that allows it), and authorizes a 72-hour hold for psychiatric care. (It is also possible to authorize a 14 day hold, called a 5250.) This is not unique to California. She almost certainly did have to stay after the first night.
I want to address as well your comment as to "thoughts of suicide". The terminology for this that's used in the literature is called a "suicidal ideation", and they run the gamut from thinking about it for a moment all the way up to making plans. A suicidal ideation is (obviously) a risk factor for suicide, but is not at all a guarantee that a patient will make an attempt on their life. (To hammer the point home, there are plenty of other risk factors that we do not hospitalize for; many patients with personality disorders will try to take their own life at some point, but we obviously cannot hospitalize them all at all times, nor should we!)
Neither I, you, nor anyone outside of this person's care network will have access to her files, so it's not reasonable for me to make a judgement call on whether she should have been placed on suicide watch or not. Given only the data provided, though, it is certainly not a slam dunk that she needed to be admitted.
I appreciate the agony you must have witnessed in someone who needed urgent psychiatric care ... but the experience that you witnessed is not universal.