The study was conducted through an on-line survey, starting on 10 April 2020 and ending on 13 April 2020. This timeline was chosen in order to assess participant response during an early phase of the COVID-19 outbreak, after the lockdown in Italy following the governmental decree of 9 March 2020, and the WHO characterization of COVID-19 as a pandemic (11 March 2020). During this period, the total COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths were 147.577 and 18.849, respectively (Italian Civil Department). The snowball sampling method was employed to recruit participants [22]. In an attempt to ensure an adequately representative sample of the Italian population, an initial subset of invitees (five participants) was selected according to fixed socio-demographic variables, including age groups (18–27, 28–37, 38–47, 48–57, and >57 years old) gender (male, female), occupation (student, employed, unemployed), education level (graduate, undergraduate), and geographic location (northern Italy, central Italy, southern Italy and islands). This subset of participants then forwarded the questionnaire to five referrals whom they considered suitable for the survey. This second subset forwarded the survey in the same way and so on, until data saturation. The survey was anonymous, and confidentiality of information was assured. Participants aged 18–75 years, living in Italy for at least four weeks from February 2020, with adequate command over written and spoken Italian language, and with at least five years of education were eligible for the study. Respondents were excluded if they were non-Italian language speakers, were currently hospitalized, reported a history of mental disorder, and/or could not complete the online survey independently. The study followed the European Survey Research Association (ESRA) guidelines. All participants completed the questionnaire on-line via EUSurvey. The study was approved by the Agostino Gemelli University Hospital Foundation IRCCS-Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Rome Ethics Committee (approval protocol number ID 3114) and was undertaken in accordance with the Principles of Human Rights, as adopted by the World Medical Association at the 18th WMA General Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, June 1964 and subsequently amended at the 64th WMA General Assembly, Fortaleza, Brazil, October 2013. The provision of electronic informed consent was mandatory in order to start the survey, and anonymity was guaranteed to all participants. The final study sample included 500 subjects from the Italian general population. The number of participants was estimated according to sensitivity analysis conducted on G*Power [23]. Power analysis suggested that an aprioristic sample size of N = 500 would detect with a probability ≥ 0.9 a minimally interesting effect size of δ = 0.2, assuming a two-sided criterion for detection that allows for a maximum Type I error rate of α = 0.05.