QUESTION

Can I sue the police or the person who called the police that led them to put me in a psychiatric ward?

Asked on Dec 05th, 2016 on Personal Injury - California
More details to this question:
At 8 am I was in emotional distress and called a crisis hotline. Afterwards, I called my mother and my crisis was resolved by 10-11am. I proceeded with normal activities and went to sleep between 9-10pm. Between 12-1am, police woke me up and began to ask questions whether or not I was going to hurt myself. They didn’t believe me when I said that I wasn’t going to hurt myself and took me to the emergency psychiatric station. While I was on hold, I was exposed to filthy conditions and drug addicts. I was sexually harassed and witnessed an angry man forcibly put in a concrete room. Twelve hours later, the attending physician diagnosed me with adjustment disorder and sent me home. The doctor felt that I didn't need to be prescribed any medications. When I returned to my living space, my roommates told me that they called a floor representative (nearly 12 hours after my distress) and didn’t expect them to call the police. This whole ordeal has traumatized me. It is difficult to sleep at night. Sometimes, I have nightmares of watching people being strapped to a bed and taken away. I live in constant fear that my roommates will call someone to take me back to the emergency psychiatric ward. I feel that the floor representative was being reckless when they notified the police without knowing the full context of the situation. I feel the police were reckless for not taking what I was saying at face value. I feel that I have lost 12 hours of my life that I could have used to study for my classes. I continue to miss classes and valuable study time because it is campus protocol for everyone who was sent to the emergency psychiatric station to see many counselors who are not flexible to my schedule. The counselors I have seen so far felt I was treated unfairly, and the situation could have been handled better.
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1 ANSWER

I do not see the basis for a lawsuit. Even if you could sue, it would cost a lot of money to depose all the people involved and hire your own psychiatrist to testify as to the standard of care. Everyone was in the position of not being sure whether you were a danger to yourself or not, so they took the reason route of assuming it was best to get your evaluation/treatment instead of dying.
Answered on Jan 26th, 2017 at 7:29 PM

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