We went through several months of violence with my son before we got a diagnosis. The police would come and he'd be fine. They told us the same thing -- we can't do anything unless we put a restraining order on him -- which was out of the question because we knew our son to be a very gentle soul and knew something was terribly wrong.
Finally, we discovered that we could Baker Act him into the crisis unit. As I said, it took two times of doing that before they were able to court order him to stay, but please tell your friend to check it out through her court house.