Description: The work of inner-city emergency psychiatric units might best be described as "medicine under siege." Emptying Beds is the result of the author's two-year immersion in one such unit and its work. It is an account of the strategies developed by a staff of psychiatrists, social workers, nurses, and other mental health workers to deal with the dilemmas they face every day.
Review Quotes: "Rhodes' observations are couched in the theroetical formulations of Michel Foucault. . . . The description of the unit's activities are bloodcurdling and funny and precisely accurate. . . . "Emptying Beds is a readable, accurate, and alarming work of anthropology."--Frank S. Pittman III, "American Journal of Psychiatry