ABSTRACT In higher education, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is essential for teaching students how to handle global sustainability concerns. While its academic benefits are known, its effects on university students' mental health are still being studied. This systematic study examines how Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) affects university students' sustainability competences, psychological well‐being, and sustainable behavior. The study followed PRISMA 2020. We searched Scopus, Web of Science, ERIC, PubMed, and ProQuest for material published from January 2018 to June 2024. From 531 records, 47 met the inclusion criteria and were selected for thematic analysis. The investigation showed that ESD improves students' sustainability knowledge, attitudes, and activities, including responsible consumption and waste reduction. A major finding is that ESD involvement improves students' psychological well‐being, including eudaimonic well‐being, self‐esteem, resilience, and 25%–30% anxiety and stress reduction. Project‐based learning and simulations were found to improve sustainability abilities and psychological skills including problem‐solving and teamwork. ESD implementation discrepancies in the Global North and South, insufficient instructor training, and the lack of consistent student assessment techniques remain problems. ESD improves cognitive development and equips pupils to be sustainable agents. Higher education must engage in faculty development, employ innovative teaching methods, and formally integrate well‐being objectives into ESD curricula to fully develop students. Limitations include a potential selection bias favoring English‐language publications and the qualitative diversity of the synthesized studies, which restricts quantitative generalization. Future research should encompass longitudinal assessments of the lasting impacts of ESD on graduates' mental health and the development of standardized, culturally adapted instruments to address implementation inconsistencies across the Global South.
Bhuttah et al. (Thu,) studied this question.