Authentic Leadership and Employee Mental Health: An Organizational Psychology Perspective

Employee mental health has become a central concern in organizational psychology, particularly as work increasingly involves uncertainty, emotional demands, and rapid organizational change. Authentic leadership offers a potentially useful approach because it emphasizes self-awareness, relational transparency, an internalized moral perspective, and balanced processing of information. This article examines how these dimensions may shape employee mental health through trust, psychological safety, perceived organizational support, and work-related resources. Using a conceptual narrative review of foundational authentic-leadership scholarship, occupational health frameworks, and research on leadership and employee well-being, the article develops an integrative explanation rather than reporting new empirical data. The analysis suggests that authentic leadership may support mental health when leaders communicate honestly, respond consistently, invite employee voice, and make decisions transparently. These behaviors can reduce interpersonal uncertainty and help employees access social and psychological resources. However, authenticity should not be equated with unrestricted self-disclosure, moral infallibility, or the replacement of professional mental-health support. Its benefits depend on organizational conditions, leader competence, workload, fairness, and access to adequate resources. The article proposes practical implications for leadership development, job design, and employee well-being evaluation, and identifies testable propositions for future empirical research.