When the System Becomes Faceless

One of the things Shattered shows in Episode 2 — Doctor Doctor — is the lived experience of navigating a system while carrying psychological injury, and how constantly changing processes can cause harm rather than help. When people are able to see for themselves how distressing this system has become, it may help — even if only a little — to build a more compassionate workforce for those injured at work, particularly those with psychological injuries.

In Shattered, Episode 2, Doctor, Doctor retired Forensic Psychiatrist, Dr Julian Parmegiani describes psychological injuries as the asbestos crisis of the future

Mental health injuries cannot be seen by the eye, but the distress behaviours are often visible. They require expert support, not lay-person management, and they require intense privacy and, most often, gentleness in approach. While much of what occurs within these systems is likely unintentional, it remains deeply problematic for those living with depression, anxiety, or PTSD. It becomes a reality-altering experience, and that has consequences for everyone involved.

This is what happens when bureaucracy can become faceless.

The good news is we have seen evidence the system is indeed trying but is it capable of rectifying years of abuse quickly enough to stop the harm and contain the psychosocial hazards?

Filming Shattered we learnt a lot ourselves by examining the asbestos crisis of the Latrobe Valley. The harm was known long before it was acknowledged. The medical evidence was all there.

The same applies to psychological injuries. We know the harm caused by such injuries and have known for a long time and indeed the suicide risk for example of workplace bullying and occupational violence.

Th reality though is it has taken a whole army of brave individuals to maintain the pressure that for too long was just an occasional story in the press. This army of injured individuals already struggling with their own mental health has driven the movement for change and a more compassionate workplace.

Against this backdrop - the very mechanisms designed to protect fairness in the system have dissolved the human presence inside them and people have been harmed by the system itself.

Some having their entire lives fractured.

Decisions have been made, but no one has owned them and there has been no one to talk to about them. Outcomes have been delivered, but no one explains them. Errors have occured, but no one is accountable for them or ever addresses the distress they have caused, compounding the distruction and lack of trust.

It is fundamentally a system of care built by correspondence.

The result is total disconnection.

However, the challenge now for the system itself, is also protecting its own workforce as the legacy of such a neglected adversarial system and the rise online of rage bait has created a complex social problem in itself. How do you balance it - protect the safety of your own workforce and attend to care of the injured?

Complaints processes within government continues to struggle for outcomes for those seeking help, whilst they continue to apply their own methodologies to the resolution process itself without adequate consultation with the complainant. This in itself has created, perhaps unintentionally another complex layer.

When individuals interact with such systems, they are often forced into a paradox: they must comply with rules that no one can fully explain or indeed gives to them, appeal decisions that no one can directly reverse, and navigate processes that no one seems to control. Yet many are cognitively impaired at the outset. The problems thss creates are obvious.

Whilst the system continues to function, its human centre has disappeared. They are too often met with responses that 'the legislation is the legislation' but the very circular nature of that legislation does often not make sense even to law makers. And so around and around it goes.

This is where frustration turns into something deeper.

It is not simply that people are denied outcomes they want. It is that they are denied recognition of their experience and logic.

A faceless system does not argue, does not listen, and does not respond in a way that acknowledges the person on the other side. It processes, but it does not engage.

Over time, this creates a psychological fracture. Individuals begin to feel as though they are interacting not with institutions, but with walls that echo back procedure instead of understanding. Every attempt to resolve an issue becomes another loop in a structure that cannot be appealed in human terms.

And yet, the system insists it is working.

This is the central tension: a system can operate and still be experientially broken. It can meet its internal definitions of success while failing the people it exists to serve. Efficiency replaces empathy. Standardisation replaces judgment. Distance replaces responsibility.

What makes this especially corrosive is not the presence of rules, but the absence of ownership. When no one is responsible, everyone is protected — except the person affected by the outcome.

And so people within the system and injured adapt. They learn to speak in the language of the system, something they should never have to do. They format their experiences into acceptable inputs. They translate frustration into forms, appeals, and tickets. But the translation always loses something essential: the human weight of what actually occurred.

Eventually, the system no longer feels like a tool. It feels like a maze with no architect willing to step forward.

This is the quiet collapse that happens when structure replaces presence. Not a dramatic failure, but a slow erosion of accountability until the system continues to function without anyone truly standing behind it.

In the context of psychological injury, this becomes even more profound. When someone is already struggling with depression, anxiety, or PTSD, the experience of a faceless system can intensify distress, distort perception, and deepen isolation. It is a perfect storm. What should be a pathway to support can instead become another source of harm.

And in that space, people are left with a simple but unsettling realisation:

They are not being ignored by a person.

They are being processed by something that no longer has a face.

Perhaps one of the answers is to bring employers and their injured together in a more compassionate dialogue and remove the focus for everyone on 'damages' within what should be a recovery system?

Part of that solution would have to be de-stimatising mental health injuries and acknowleding the harm such workplace injuries cause in a far more nuanced public health campaign.

To do that however it would require the system to separate recovery from legal aspects? No one injured can get well while being beaten up (metaphorically) by the same organisations tasked with their recovery. Insurers know this and struggle to separate the management of such consumer confusion. Perhaps the legacy of another time and era...

However given the existing complex nature of stakeholders within the system that would require a social movement to drive it, or an alternative system emerging to disrupt.

Even then it would require a very brave government to address.