I'm shocked that people said they'd let you go home. If a patient said they were 'seriously suicidal', then the chances are that you wouldn't be going home without some form of intervention. I'm not entirely sure that they'd 'lock you up' though. I also guess it depends on HOW suicidal the person is. Whether they had a passing thought of suicide, but they had no intention of carrying it out. Or whether they had made specific plans on how they'd do it, when they'd do it and so on.
Also, I had the Crisis team coming out to me once. I HATED, HATED, HATED it.