It is with great pleasure that I have accepted the invitation to act as the new Editor-in-Chief of this important journal. It is an honour for me to succeed my esteemed colleagues, Professor Emeritus Meir Steiner and Professor Claudio Soares.

Professor Meir Steiner has been a Member of the Board of this journal since it was founded in 1998 and took over the task of Editor-in-Chief from Mario Lanczik in 2002. Meir Steiner’s primary research areas include the pathophysiology and psychopathology of mood and anxiety disorders related to women’s reproduction. Professor Claudio Soares, a psychiatrist with similar research interests, was a Section Editor from 2005 until 2009 and then Co-Editor-in-Chief. Mario Lanczik, Meir Steiner and Claudio Soares have made this journal a great success, and I would like to thank them all, also on behalf of women throughout the world, and on behalf of the publisher, especially Sandra Lesny.

The journal now has an Impact Factor of 2.619 and in 2016 received as many as 353 submissions and published 136 articles in 6 volumes. My special thanks go to all the reviewers and the Editorial Advisory Board for their critical selection of the manuscripts. I very much appreciate their expertise and the enormous amount of valuable time they have invested. My great hope is that with our joint efforts we can further promote the field.

Let me briefly introduce myself: I am Professor of Psychiatry and Head of the Center for Gender Research and Early Detection at the Psychiatric University Clinics in Basel, Switzerland. I have specialized in psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as well as in consultation and liaison psychiatry and in old age psychiatry.

My main research focus has recently been on schizophrenic psychoses, primarily their onset and early detection.

My other research focus is on gender differences in common mental disorders and the specific aspects of mental disorders in women, in particular risk factors—be they psychoneuro‐endocrine or psychosocial ones. This includes research not only on the peripartum period and menopause but e.g. also on violence against women. For more details, please go to (http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anita_Riecher-Roessler/).Coming from this background, my wish is for the journal to develop a somewhat broader scope. While maintaining a focus on topics related to peripartum issues, we should acknowledge that women’s identity and mental health can also be influenced by many other psychosocial and biological factors. One of the great challenges for this journal will be to contribute to the explanation of sex and gender differences in common mental disorders, for example regarding their prevalence, symptomatology, risk and influencing factors and course. The causes of these differences are still poorly understood, and there has been comparatively little sound research to explain them. This lack of research is the more surprising, since explanations of these findings could give us important insights into the aetiological and pathogenetic mechanisms of mental disorders in general. At the same time, they would most likely improve our therapeutic approaches for both women and men. This journal offers an excellent opportunity to contribute to understanding more about these unresolved questions using a multidisciplinary approach.

With this in mind, I hope for a productive 2017 with plenty of interesting contributions from all fields relevant to women’s mental health.

Best wishes and many thanks to everyone helping to advance the field,

Your Editor-in-Chief

Anita Riecher-Rössler