> Likewise if 'God' tells someone to kill themselves how is that > *not* mental illness in the same way that if the Flying Spaghetti > Monster telling someone to kill themselves is mental illness. That's not what you told us. You said that he said that God had 'told' him he was going to die, not that God had told him to kill himself. [That sentence is just crying out for "yes, no, but," a la Matt Lucas somewhere in it.] There's a big difference between "I think I'm going to die" and "I shall kill myself". If he did say the latter then I'm all in favour of an emergency section, but it's not what you said. There's a difference between a religious person feeling that God 'told' them something and the hearing of voices. The 'hearing' of a "small still voice" is not the frank auditory hallucination of a psychotic. What's usually meant by folks who are that way inclined saying God 'told' them something is an event like "my bible/koran just fell open at XYZ and I felt that God was telling me to...". Did you infer this man to be having frank hallucinations because he used a term like 'told' or did he actually describe frank hallucinations? > As for involving the police being a threat? Not really anything to do with me, I raised it because you sounded concerned about the issue of possible coercion. It's a debating point, not an accusation.