Sir James Coxe, a nineteenth-century English MP said in 1877: “I think it is a very hard case for a man to be locked up in an asylum and kept there; you may call it anything you like, but it is a prison.”

In what way are they not prisoners?
They can’t leave so it is a prison.

Szasz wrote {“Not surprisingly, psychiatrists resent being considered jailers. Confronted with the reality that the mental hospital is a prison and that the psychiatrist who works there is a jailer, they deceive themselves, no less than they deceive the public, with a rhetoric of “care.”}
They don’t have the right as convicts in many cases, such as the right to refuse medicine, or the right to an hour of outside/daylight, every day.

“Doctors cannot just order people held because they want to, and they can be held accountable for their decision to commit”
The case of Rodney Yoder held for 15 years.
w.semissourian.com/story.html$rec=154421
proves you wrong there.

90% of those accused of needing commitment get commited in Virginia. How does a mental patient contradict a psychiatrists opinion?
Kind of close to 100% conviction rate isn’t it?
w.dailypress.com/news/local/dp-now-supreme.jn22,0,7472294.story?coll=dp-news-local-final

Most states give a broad number of persons the privilege to make brief involuntary commitments for evaluation and treatment, subject to action of a court and requiring approval of a judge at a hearing for any extension. The commitment can be made by a police officer, licensed mental health counselor or clinical social worker, psychologist, nurse practitioner and yes, even a doctor. Evaluation after admission is done by a psychiatrist and the detainee has to be released if found not to be a danger to himself or another. In most states, unless the detainee is ordered to be held by a judge, he has to be released after a short time, usually two to three days.

Doctors cannot just order people held because they want to, and they can be held accountable for their decision to commit. The decision does not require any findings of criminal activity; it has nothing to do with criminal activity or incarceration for the same. Commitment is an act done for reasons of public safety, and has to be justified on that basis. It can be thought of in the same manner as quarantine orders. Lawbreaking is not required.

The state and its legislative representatives confer the “power” to confine and establish its limitations.
Individual liberty can be curtailed, even without a criminal process, and I am wondering where you ever got the idea that these kinds of limitations were not always considered reasonable.

You are dishonest in referring to those confined for evaluation as “prisoners,” they aren’t.

If you don’t like that kind of law, write your representative.