Dataset from the comment Nania T, Dellafiore F, Caruso R, Barello S. Risk and protective factors for psychological distress among Italian university students during the COVID-19 pandemic: The beneficial role of health engagement. Int J Soc Psychiatry. 2020 Jul 28:20764020945729. doi: 10.1177/0020764020945729. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 32721256. Introduction We read with great interest the study by Torales et al. (2020) and colleagues on the impact of COVID-19 on the global and mental health of citizens across countries. They stated that global health initiatives should be employed to manage psychosocial stressors, particularly those related to the experience of isolation and quarantine among the general population. There have been reports on the psychological impact of the epidemic on citizens, patients, medical workforce, children, and older adults (Barello et al., 2020; Dubey et al., 2020; Garnier-Crussard et al., 2020; Li et al., 2020; Lima et al., 2020). However, few studies on the mental health status of Italian university students facing the epidemic has been conducted to date. At this regard, university students should be considered as a potentially higher risk population for mental health disorders related to the COVID-19 pandemic, as they were asked to deeply reframe their daily habits. The continuous spread of the epidemic, strict isolation measures, being often far from home and lack of interpersonal relationships across Italy, may have hugely affected the mental health of university students. Furthermore, university students, more than others social groups, had to tackle the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation about COVID-19, due to their higher social media exposure (Rovetta & Bhagavathula, 2020). The re-organization of learning activities and of their habits could represent a challenging demand for students, which requires adequate institutional responses to make them able to manage anxiety and stress. Therefore, we believe that a wider understanding of those factors that might contribute in exacerbating anxiety and poor mental health outcomes in university students is warranted to address this issue to provide high-quality, timely crisis-oriented psychological services to this vulnerable population (Tang et al., 2020). Specifically, further studies should encompass positive and negative determinants of students’ Covid-19–related distress.