> As an EMT I frequently transported people to hospitals (or from hospitals to psychiatric facilities) following their arrest. > I saw no evidence of its abuse

> As an EMT I frequently transported people to hospitals (or from hospitals to psychiatric facilities) following their arrest. > I saw no evidence of its abuse. Unless your EMT services is responsible for 100% of the patients that enter the psych facility, the set of patients you see is probably affected by survivorship bias[1]. The people you see may be biased towards people with a legitimate problem severe enough for someone to call an EMT. > Most psych facilities are over-enrolled and have no interest in keeping people around once they're stable enough to be released About 8 years ago had an experience with a facility (in the SF Bay Area). A psych I had seen once for <5 min had me arrested and sent for a 3 day hold. The justification fabricated; a few sentences of vague nonsense. After finally seeing a doctor on day 2 for about 1 minute, he upgraded the 3 day hold into a 2 week hold at a psych facility (supposedly on the suggestion of the original psych). The facility was over-enrolled; the staff often complained about having to deny admission due to lack of room. Everyone at the facility that wasn't a doctor thought I obviously should be released immediately. I didn't see a doctor again until day 5 (I explained the situation for q few minutes, meeting over, nothing happened), while the facility was somehow able to justify to Medi-Cal why they should pay several thousand dollars to keep me there for another day. On day 10, I guess Medi-Cal stopped paying. The doctor showed up for a 2nd meeting, insisted I take a shitty SRNI and finally let me leave. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias