Other than suicide, we usually go the other way on commitments, here, though. It's usually really hard to have someone committed. I'm sure the police have an easier time of it, but a judge still has to rule based on evidence, and the bar is so high for most behavior.
Since everything is confidential, honestly the lady could be misunderstanding what exactly got her committed and on psychoactive drugs. I mean, that's often part of the disorders that get you committed.
Right. And I'm not familiar with any states that allow someone to be held for eight days without any sort of order from a judge. Generally, someone can be held for 72 hours before they have to be released, switched to voluntary status, or committed by a judge.
Because of confidentiality laws, we often only get one side in cases like these. Sometimes the one side is clear enough, but other times it's not or there are things that don't quite add up.
I find the part about her being followed by Obama curious. Yes, it would be ridiculous to commit someone just because they said Obama followed them on Twitter. But I have to wonder how that even came up during the interaction with the police/hospital, because unlike the BMW, it doesn't seem relevant to the case. This is just speculation, but I wonder if she brought it up in anger and it was seen as erratic/manic behavior ("You think you can mess with me? I'm a professional! Obama follows me on Twitter!"). It's also possible that the way she brought it up really did sound delusional ("Obama follows me on Twitter, and if I tweeted right now, he could have twenty secret service agents here within ten minutes").
In any case, I find it doubtful that she was literally committed just because she said Obama follows her on Twitter or that she owns a BMW. We know very little about her demeanor at the time.
I do think that, like shadowwalker says, there can be a real problem of medical professionals overreacting and taking stuff out of context when someone is mentally ill. It's wrong to assume that getting upset or ranting is a symptom of mental illness. Even if someone is getting upset because of their illness, sometimes being upset is a reasonable response.
But I think it's suspect that this case is being presented as though she calmly asked the police for her BMW back and got committed solely because they couldn't believe a black woman could own a BMW. I'm not saying racism couldn't have played a role, or that it was right for her to be committed (we don't know), but either way, I suspect the situation was a bit more complicated than the way she's presenting it.
