Yeah, that was a STOOPID plot line. Can you say 'agenda'? I never watched "ER" that much, but that did it for me, too.
Heh...when I was a nursing student, we were doing our psych rotation and one of the things I learned was that when a psych patient would act out and try to get attention focused on them, we were to say "I'm not feeding in to your mal-adaptive behavior." and turn around and walk off. Heh heh...man, I loved that statement. You should see the perplexed look on their faces. Suddenly they didn't have an audience. I use that statement a lot, even to this day...though I may not say it outloud.
It's basically how I felt when I turned off ER.