Abstract The unpredictable landscape of our times, characterized by adverse life events ranging from personal challenges to global pandemics and environmental disasters, underscores the urgent need for comprehensive insight into how such adversities shape students' well‐being in the context of tertiary education. To that aim, we performed a systematic search that spanned across three databases (PubMed, Scopus, ERIC), adhering to predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. This systematic review targeted peer‐reviewed, empirical studies, written in English, with no time limitations. According to the main findings, the experience of negative life events is associated with a decrease in life satisfaction and positive affect, while it appears to be linked with an increase regarding negative affect. Students' psychopathology is also affected, as experiencing adverse life events is related to depression and post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, levels of anxiety, stress and suicidal ideation. Furthermore, the relationship between adverse life events and students' well‐being appears to be influenced by multiple factors that can mitigate the negative effects of adversity. By advancing our understanding of the association between adversity and university students' outcomes, this research enriches scholarly discourse, as it attempts to identify research gaps, while it also presents and promotes knowledge regarding the scope, nature and interactions between all the involved variables.
Malamati et al. (Wed,) studied this question.