Depending on where you are, please be honest with your therapist. Usually they can't (and don't want to) get you committed unless they're convinced you're in immediate danger of badly harming yourself or others. If that's the case, maybe going to the hospital isn't a bad idea. I've talked to my therapist about suicidal ideation, frequent dreams about suicide that I found pleasant, and about self harming, and she never even considered it. All she did was refer me to a psychiatrist, but I wasn't forced to see her, let alone committed to a hospital.
Do look up whether the rules are different in your country, though.
As a therapist, I totally agree with what you’ve written above. However, I also have the unfortunate experience of working with mental health providers (mainly psychiatrists in pill-kiosk roles) who will send patients to the ER if they mention any suicidal ideation out of a paranoid fear of losing their license. Thankfully, ER doctors tend to actually assess the seriousness of said ideation and don’t admit people who aren’t seriously considering self-harm, but it’s still an ordeal.
So, I would simply add to your advice that if any mental health provider calls 911 at the mere mention of suicidal thoughts, get yourself a new provider immediately. That provider either hasn’t learned how to properly assess suicidality or is too chicken-shit to do it (far more likely, the latter).
Doesn’t make sense to send people to the ER? I’ve read too many tales of people going themselves or taking someone else and the ER kinda shrugs because they’re not equipped to really deal with whether or not to commit someone, or if they can hold someone, it’s usually only for very short periods of something like 24-48 hours.
Yes. It's a play on words. Therapy can sometimes use role plays. In this role play, I was acting like I was okay, which implies I wasn't okay. The therapist, at face value, seems like they acted like a baker, which doesn't make sense. However, the thing is that a "baker act" is when a therapist places their client in a psych unit against their client's own will because the therapist believes the client is a considerable threat to their own safety. In the case of the play on words, the therapist saw through my "I'm okay" act by noticing that I wasn't okay and put me in the hospital.
They're socks with grippy material on the bottom to keep you from slipping. They give them to you when you're admitted to the hospital. The implication is that they were sent to the psych ward and put on suicide watch.
It is my understanding that the joke is misinterpreted or maybe correctly interpreted as some serious problem with the person, so that the therapist puts them in a mental hospital, where those things are worn instead of shoes.