Involuntary Holds and Consent: Help or Harm?

A woman in mental health crisis is taken to the hospital against her will, held in a locked ward for seventy-two hours, and emerges traumatized by the experience, her distrust of mental health services now so profound that she will never seek help voluntarily again - the involuntary hold that was meant to save her having damaged her in ways that may prove more dangerous than the crisis it addressed. A man whose family initiated an involuntary hold feels betrayed by the people who were supposed to love him, the relationship rupture lasting long after the psychiatric hold ends.