Struggles of professionalism and emotional labour in standardized mental health care

This article points out how recent public sector reforms under headings as New Public Management, Lean and Quality Reforms entail different forms for standardization, and examines how this development instigates a transformation of interdisciplinary and highly skilled emotional labor in mental healthcare. It is based on an ethnographic study of a Danish child psychiatric unit, which ‘produces’ diagnoses and treatment/therapy for children and their families. We illustrate how the enforcement of standardization upsets the balance between the humanistic and medical aspects of psychiatry as a discipline and field of practice, and show how this development challenges professional identities, interdisciplinary collaboration and hierarchical relations. The development is however negotiated,