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Its not bulletproof and it of course my conclusion must have justification. But for a number of reasons it becomes very difficult to surmount, e.g. now the standard is "reasonable" so they must prove (I think) that no reasonable fact finder could come to the same conclusion I did vis a vis whether the patient met involuntary crtieria, rather than that I failed to meet the standard of care.
The argument that the law FORBADE you from admitting a patient voluntarily is a bit of a stretch, although I see what you're saying. Involuntary, you could definitely use that argument, but I don't know if anyone is going to interpret most voluntarily admission state statutes as forbidding you legally from admitting someone to an inpatient unit if they're coming in saying they want to kill themselves and want to be admitted to an inpatient unit.
The much better line of reasoning to discharge a voluntary patient is what you aluded to, that you need to explain in your note why you feel an acute inpatient stay would not modify the patient's risk or in fact be harmful long term (which you can certainly argue for personality disorders) or why you think the patients actual short term risk is lower than it would appear on the face of things (ex. malingering, chronic persistent SI, etc).