I've never seen it be in someone's control, in the sense that they were able to say "this isn't working for me, I'd like to leave now" and then were allowed to leave.
I've also never seen it go all the way to court; rather, there's a statutory period of time after a voluntary admission where you have to either be released or taken to court, and that period is something on the order of an entire business week.
The pattern I've seen is (even at the nicer facilities) one of facilities staffed by nurses and counselors but with very overbooked psychiatrists, and all decisions about care are ultimately delegated to those psychiatrists. It can take days to make a decision happen just because of round-trip and scheduling delays.
The (call it) 5-day clock only starts ticking when you're formally acknowledged to have made a request to leave, too, so those same round-trip delays can keep you confined for longer than the statutory window.
When things go wrong, it's a frightening experience. Psychiatric hospitals carefully control your access to the outside world. Visitors are allowed only during limited visiting hours. Phone calls are allowed only during specific phone hours. You reside in a room with one or more strangers also suffering from psychiatric conditions, often significantly worse than your own. You're required to take medication, and the medications issued are rarely the same as a careful psychiatrist you had a preexisting relationship would issue. There's not just a loss of personal freedom but also of body integrity.
Like I said: however suboptimal it is, this can all be for the greater good, if a crisis situation has spun out of control and what's really needed is some kind of circuit breaker to arrest the crisis and ensure that someone ends up with access to professional psychiatric care. I'm not saying people shouldn't go to the hospital! I'm saying that people encouraging others to go to the hospital should be aware of what they're saying.
I also think you could stand to be a little bit less strident and a little more specific. I think it's likely that you have a set of experiences with acute psych care that differ from other people in this community. I've seen good acute psych care too --- in a university system --- but it was acute outpatient, not inpatient.
I've also never seen it go all the way to court; rather, there's a statutory period of time after a voluntary admission where you have to either be released or taken to court, and that period is something on the order of an entire business week.
The pattern I've seen is (even at the nicer facilities) one of facilities staffed by nurses and counselors but with very overbooked psychiatrists, and all decisions about care are ultimately delegated to those psychiatrists. It can take days to make a decision happen just because of round-trip and scheduling delays.
The (call it) 5-day clock only starts ticking when you're formally acknowledged to have made a request to leave, too, so those same round-trip delays can keep you confined for longer than the statutory window.
When things go wrong, it's a frightening experience. Psychiatric hospitals carefully control your access to the outside world. Visitors are allowed only during limited visiting hours. Phone calls are allowed only during specific phone hours. You reside in a room with one or more strangers also suffering from psychiatric conditions, often significantly worse than your own. You're required to take medication, and the medications issued are rarely the same as a careful psychiatrist you had a preexisting relationship would issue. There's not just a loss of personal freedom but also of body integrity.
Like I said: however suboptimal it is, this can all be for the greater good, if a crisis situation has spun out of control and what's really needed is some kind of circuit breaker to arrest the crisis and ensure that someone ends up with access to professional psychiatric care. I'm not saying people shouldn't go to the hospital! I'm saying that people encouraging others to go to the hospital should be aware of what they're saying.
I also think you could stand to be a little bit less strident and a little more specific. I think it's likely that you have a set of experiences with acute psych care that differ from other people in this community. I've seen good acute psych care too --- in a university system --- but it was acute outpatient, not inpatient.