The purpose of this paper is to prove that mental health nurses in Europe are required to perform emotional labour. First, I will examine Arlie Hochschild’s theory of emotional labour from The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling and introduce the three characteristics of emotional labour. Subsequently, I will prove that mental health nurses in Europe are obliged to perform emotional labour in their profession due to frequent high-intensity interactions, building relationships with patients and following their employers emotional protocol. Lastly, I will study the ramifications that mental health nurses are subjected to by performing emotional labour. Through exploring case studies, I argue that in Europe, mental health nurses are required to perform extensive emotional labour; therefore, they are vulnerable to detrimental psychological effects such as threatening their ability to provide quality care and emotional exhaustion.
Part I. Hochschild’s Theory of Emotional Labour The purpose of this section is to communicate Hochschild’s theory of emotional labour, as explained in The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Initially, I will explore what emotional labour is. Additionally,
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Hochschild coined the term emotional labour to explain this third type of labour. She defines it as a labour that “requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces a proper state of mind in others” (Hochschild 2012:7). Through surface acting and deep acting, employees can challenge their natural emotions and produce a “facial and bodily display” that is appropriate for their occupational tasks (Hochschild 2012:7). In addition, emotional labour holds an exchange value as it is expected from employers as a part of their