Many of us grew up with books and movies like Winnie the Pooh, and of course our Disney favourites such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King along with countless others.

While cute or comedic stories at the time, researchers have gone back to their childhoods and reviewed many of these films and their animated characters to determine if there are underlying references to mental illness, and if so, how those characters are portrayed and what impact that may have on children and their attitudes towards mental health.

Take a few minutes today and check out the two articles below, the first on the psychosocial problems and pathologies in the Hundred Acre Woods, and the second on the prevalence of mental illness references in Disney movies. Develop your own opinion as to whether these films further perpetuate the stigma and stereotypes surrounding mental health conditions.

"Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: A neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne" by Sarah E. Shea, Kevin Gordon, Ann Hawkins, Janet Kawchuk, Donna Smith (CMAJ)

"Mental Illness in Disney Animated Films" by Andrea Lawson & Gregory Fouts (Canadian Journal of Psychiatry)

In this must read three part series (links below), The Boston Globe provides an in-depth look at mental illness as readers meet Michael Bourne, a 33 year old man with a long history of mental health issues, as well as his loving mother Peggy Bourne who throughout the years still tirelessly continues to be his support and caregiver. In this powerful series, one gets a unique and important perspective, as you hear about a family desperately trying to navigate the mental health system and trying to accomplish the challenging task of getting their loved one proper treatment and keeping them safe and in recovery for more than a few weeks or months at a time ... it's a story that is all too common.

"Mike was 33 years old. He’d been in and out of institutions for half his life, since he first got sick when he was 17. His diagnosis had changed over the years — it was #schizophrenia, then #bipolar disorder, then #schizoaffective disorder — and his medications were in constant flux. Things stayed good for a while, then went bad again. Now Mike’s medications seemed to be working, and he was saying that he wanted to stay on them — a view he didn’t always take. But there had been so many days like this, so many hopeful new beginnings.

Often, when bringing him home from a hospital stay, Peggy saw again the man she knew: funny and charming, intelligent and sweet. And then she watched that man disappear, receding from her as though into the depths of a lake. He was replaced by someone else, whose thoughts she did not understand. Mike suffered at times from #delusions. His mother never feared him, but some of the neighbors did, interpreting his loudness and profanity as threatening.

Peggy had lived for years with the constant worry. She had lived with the complaints from neighbors and the calls from the police in the middle of the night; she had coped with Mike giving all his money to strangers or throwing all their food away, believing it was poisoned. She had watched his friends grow up and get jobs and get married, while he remained trapped in place. Yet she still believed that one day, the right treatment would free them. Mike would stay well, and she would have her son back."

• "Part 1 of 3: Brave and Afraid and Heading Down The Longest Road" by Jenna Russell (Boston Globe)
• "Part 2 of 3: Days of Crisis, Compassion, Faith and Futility" by Jenna Russell (Boston Globe)
• "Part 3 of 3: Desperately Guarding a Spark of Hope" by Jenna Russell (Boston Globe)

Substance abuse and addiction is often overlooked in seniors. What happens when these seniors are discharged from hospital following a medical admission and require physical rehabilitation? “Traditionally, people with these issues have been ‘undesirable admissions’ [to traditional rehabilitation programs]. They may have behaviours that the staff isn’t prepared to cope with. There may be family dynamics.” Jewish Lifecare, a nursing home in Bronx, New York is working toward overcoming this by providing an inpatient rehabilitation program for seniors requiring physical rehabilitation following discharge from hospital who are also addicted to alcohol or prescription drugs. To read more about this innovative program, check out the article "The Addict Down the Hall" by Paula Span (The New York Times).

Pranay Sinha, a first year internal medicine resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital comments further on the growing topic of physician suicide in his scarily truthful and profound article "Why Do Doctors Commit Suicide?" for The New York Times. In his article, Sinha focuses our attention on new residents by first bringing attention to the recent tragic deaths of two new physicians, both in their second month of residency. He accurately describes how the transition out of med school and into practice is associated with immense stress, pressure and demands, and is a time when many are at their most vulnerable. That combined with a lack of mental health and wellness supports in residency programs and a culture which teaches residents and students to repress their emotions, fears and doubts rather than voicing them can lead to a troublesome and sometimes deadly combination. A must read for all med students and residents!

"While acute stress, social isolation, pre-existing mental illness and substance abuse may be obvious factors to consider, we must also ask if there are aspects of medical culture that might push troubled residents beyond their reserves of emotional resilience. There is a strange machismo that pervades medicine. Doctors, especially fledgling doctors like me, feel pressure to project intellectual, emotional and physical prowess beyond what we truly possess...

We masquerade as strong and untroubled professionals even in our darkest and most self-doubting moments. How, then, are we supposed to identify colleagues in trouble — or admit that we may need help ourselves?"

26 year old NYU School of Medicine Class of 2014 graduate Sean O'Rourke's tragic death two weeks ago brought to light an issue which is rarely spoken of in med school classrooms, between physicians, or more generally in society ... physician ‪suicide‬.

It's important to remember that physicians are not immune to mental illness or suicidal ideation. In fact, as the article below points out "studies have found that doctors suffer from ‪depression‬, post-traumatic stress disorder and the highest suicide rate of any profession."

In her must-read article "When doctors commit suicide, it’s often hushed up" for the Washington Post, family physician Pamela Wible MD, explains the "triple taboo" surrounding physician suicide, explores why so many doctors and ‪‎med students‬ are burnt out which can lead to ‪mental health‬ concerns, and what she's doing (and what others can do) to help stir the conversation and provide support to those in the medical profession who are struggling in silence. Check it out now!

"I pointed out why so many doctors and medical students are burning out: We see far too much pain; to ask for help is considered a weakness; to visit a psychiatrist can be professional suicide, meaning that we risk loss of license and hospital privileges, not to mention wariness from patients if our emotional distress becomes known."

Canadian writer Alison Pick addresses some of the commonly held fears and concerns that surround the use of antidepressants by sharing her own experiences with depression and medication, as well as commentary of mental health advocates and experts, in this great Globe and Mail article "Why we're afraid of antidepressants - even when we take them".

"There’s been a backlash against antidepressants since Prozac Nation came out in 1994. Part of our skepticism is about whether Big Pharma has our health at stake or just their profit. Part of our skepticism is about whether antidepressants actually work. These are valid concerns: According to a report in 2012, 42.6 million prescriptions for antidepressants were filled in Canada that year (our population is not quite 35 million). But there’s a deeper fear, too, that pills are a kind of cheating, a lazy way to deal with a problem, and that they will muffle our true or “essential” selves".

"Demons Inside: Teens at Risk Can Hide Mental Illness" by Joan Raymond is an important read on the challenges of making mental health‬ diagnoses and providing support to adolescents.

"For teens part of the problem is that "adolescents fundamentally want to fit in, and anything that marks them as different is a problem" says child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Niranjan Karnik of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Added to that issue is that adolescents may not even know what "feeling bad" really means since the have less life experience, and shorter reference points to compare the so-called good days versus bad days."