The Mental-Health Mirage: Inside WorkSafeBC’s Support Illusion

When psychological injury meets a system built to contain, not support.

Summary
WorkSafeBC promotes psychological safety with public campaigns, training language, and wellness messaging. Workers are told help exists. The lived experience tells a different story. Mental health cases are absorbed, delayed, blended, and quietly forgotten. The protection is theatrical. The outcome is administrative containment, not care.

The Experience
The promise:
Your mental health matters.

The reality:
• Psychological injury claims not adjudicated
• Mental health claims merged into unrelated files, avoiding accountability
• Crisis treated as administrative inconvenience, not harm
• Written communication avoided, phone calls preferred to prevent record trails
• Employer narrative adopted before evidence is reviewed
• Escalation loops that lead back to the same gatekeepers
• Workers left in limbo with no decision, no closure, and no path to appeal

No assessment.
No ruling.
No recourse.

A stalled claim cannot be appealed. It simply sits until the worker gives up or breaks.

How the System Operates

1. Speak the language of care
2. Avoid written commitments
3. Delay until urgency fades
4. Merge claims to blur responsibility
5. Return pressure to the employer
6. Protect the institution from liability

This is not a glitch.
It is the operating model.

Evidence Secured
Held records include:
• Time stamped unanswered requests
• Refusals to communicate in writing
• Confidential information shared without consent
• Claims blended to prevent formal determination
• Public mental health messaging running alongside internal neglect

The files exist.
They will be released in sequence.

Why It Matters
Support is not measured by slogans or training slogans.
Support is measured by decisions and outcomes.

WorkSafeBC publicly champions psychological safety.
Privately, it avoids acknowledging psychological harm whenever recognition creates risk or responsibility.

Closing
Mental health protection exists in theory.
The worker is abandoned in practice.

When acknowledging harm becomes inconvenient, the support disappears and the system shows its true purpose: management of damage to the institution, not support for the injured person.