2020 has been a remarkable year for all of us. A new virus has unexpectedly turned our world upside down. We still do not know how we will look back on this many years later - as a very shocking and bizarre episode or the beginning of a new era.

Women have played and still play a special role during the pandemic. Some of us have shown enormous strength - be it as devoted care takers for their families or Covid-19 patients, or as wise politicians who have led their countries cautiously and successfully through this crisis. But some of us have suffered more than ever, from anxiety, fears and other sequelae of the omnipresent threat, or from increasing domestic violence.

Archives of Women’s Mental Health has tried to help researchers to publish Covid-19 related results quickly without compromising quality. This has been a major team effort, even more so as we had a strong increase in submissions. I would like to sincerely thank my Section Editors, the members of our Editorial Board and all reviewers for their enormous work during this unprecedented time.

My special thanks would go to Prof Ian Brockington and Prof Hans-Ulrich Wittchen who will step down from their Section Editor role this year, and to Prof Glenda Marlene MacQueen, who was a precious member of our editorial board and passed away in March this year, which left us with great sadness.

Prof Ian Brockington, who has served as a Section Editor for many years, is now at the age of 85 and would like to retire from our journal’s editorial duties. This is understandable, but nevertheless sad for us. We all have so much enjoyed his support and company! We are very proud of what he has achieved in the field of perinatal mental health. In 1980 he was the founder and first president of the Marcé Society. In 1987, as one of the pioneers in this field he started a community-based clinical service for mothers backed by an inpatient mother and baby unit. In 1993 he founded the Section on Women’s Mental Health in the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) and was its first chairperson. He also chaired the WPA task force on «child protection and the promotion of mental health in the children of parents with psychiatric disorders». He has published numerous articles and monographs, mainly on the psychiatry of childbearing. Many clinicians and researchers admire him as one of the great figures of psychiatry of childbearing and are very fond of his charming way of sharing his enormous knowledge. Dear Ian, we will miss you! We wish you many wonderful and happy moments during your retirement, with your grandchildren in your fairy-tale garden and in your house with your many books, which are often not only written but also printed and bound by yourself.

Prof Hans-Ulrich Wittchen, who has been with the journal for many years and contributed enormously to the high standard of our publications, especially in the field of epidemiology and regarding cohort studies, will stay with us in the editorial board, but will step down from his role as Section editor due to many other obligations, in particular his new professorship at the University of Munich, Germany. We are very grateful to have him continue to be on board!

His position of Section Editor for epidemiology will be succeeded by Prof Roselind Lieb, who is a Professor for Clinical Psychology and Epidemiology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. She has been working at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Max-Planck Institut Munich in Germany beforehand and has got an outstanding research record especially in the development and incidence of mental disorders, their diagnosis, classification, risk factors, course and therapy. She is very experienced with cohort studies and statistics and will certainly be a great enrichment for our journal. We look very much forward to working with you, Roselind!

With this team and all of YOU we hope that the journal will continue to be as successful as in the previous years, when we achieved a 5-year Impact Factor of 3.23. Thanks again to all of you for your great contributions! I sincerely hope that the high quality work in our journal will make an impact on improving the standards in the field and the mental health of women worldwide.

Prof. em. Dr. med. Anita Riecher-Rössler

Editor-in-Chief