**1. Introduction**

In December 2019, an outbreak of pneumonia associated with a new coronavirus (i.e., severe acute respiratory syndrome due to coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)) was reported in Wuhan, China. In the following weeks, the infection attracted worldwide attention for its rapid and exponential diffusion across different countries around the world. On 12 February 2020, WHO named it Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) [1].

At the beginning of April 2020, COVID-19 has infected more than one and a half million people, causing over 80,000 deaths in 204 countries [1]. This viral infection spread quickly, becoming unstoppable, and forcing the WHO to declare it a pandemic [1]. Although the containment measures implemented in China have been successful in the reduction of new cases by more than 90%, this trend was not reported in other countries, including Italy. According to the Italian Institute of Health, Italy, until 8 April 2020, has had 139,442 confirmed cases of infection and 17,699 deaths, becoming one of the countries with the highest rate of death due to the COVID-19 outbreak [2]. On 8 March 2020, the Italian Government adopted extraordinary measures to limit viral transmission, minimizing contacts with people infected by the virus. The Italian population has been subjected to a period of forced social distancing, with restricted movements. It is the first time in Italy that such restrictive measures have been taken to contain the spread of infection. These actions had a high impact on the Italian lifestyles (e.g., working, education, social interactions). However, there are worldwide precedents for these measures. For example, during the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China and Canada, or during the 2014 Ebola occurrence in Africa [3], quarantine and social distancing rules were also imposed.

Recent reviews suggest that the psychological impact of quarantine and social distancing is wide-ranging, substantial, and can be long-lasting, including anxiety and mood disorders, psychological distress and post-traumatic stress disorder, sleep disturbance, and other psychopathological conditions [3,4]. Accordingly, as reported by previous studies on the COVID-19 emergency in China [5–9], we aimed to investigate the psychological status of the Italian people in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, trying to define the reaction of the Italians to the government's measures of enforced social distancing in this extraordinary situation. Specifically, we focused our attention on the level of anxiety, mood, and other psychopathological symptoms as indicators of general distress in the current conditions. We also tried to identify possible differences in the Italian territorial areas (North, Central and South Italy) as a consequence of the heterogeneous diffusion of the contagion that has seen North Italy as the central core of the emergency, with the highest number of infections and deaths due to COVID-19.

Moreover, we tried to evaluate mood changes by comparing participants' self-perception of mood before and after the spread of the infection.
