Perhaps because the person is mentally ill and needs the resources of a trained mental health professional? It sounds as though you equate common, everyday mood or behavioral difficulties with mental illness. It's actually a very different thing.
Priests are not trained to deal with mental illness and are specifically directed to refer individuals in need of intervention for professional services (sometimes to Catholic Family and Child Services or to a psychiatric clinic if more serious). Not more than a week ago I read an article -- from Catholic News Service, possibly -- in which a point was made that priests were not to make the confessional into a psychotherapy booth.
So far here, no one has mentioned or sought to amplify that the recently passed New York law recklessly tramples on the previously sacrosanct ethical area of the knowledge open to your doctor, psychiatrist, priest, or husband/wife which has always been considered a "privileged communication."
This is a very deep and dangerous trespass of an individual's personal right to professional privacy.
This is exactly why the medical professional must take the route of involuntary commitment if his judgment indicates this is the only route to protect both the individual and the community, as well as his/her own reputation when no other choice is open.
This New York law must be judged unconstitutional immediately, and its authors disciplined, as well.
Don't you think this upsets long-held protections for all three unalienable rights: life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?