Mental Health Interview w/ Johnny Ruhl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOzl8Brtxxk

I sat down with MTSU adjunct professor, Johnny Ruhl to get his take on mental health. Johnny was raised in a cottage in rural Pennsylvania with no electricity or running water, much different than most people of the newer generations are being raised. He says that the key to good mental health is being social, though loneliness is important to feel sometimes.

Full Transcript

RAPIER: What’s your name? 

RUHL: My name is Johnny Ruhl. 

RAPIER: Nice to meet you. Can you explain to me what “mental health” means to you? 

RUHL: Oh, well, it’s something I had never given any thought to, actually. My first thought is whether or not I’m cognitive. My sister has dementia, so that is my first thought. But I know that’s not usually how it’s used. It’s usually used with people who are not in control of their, the way I think if it, in control of their emotions, probably more than anything else, and their ability to make logical conclusions. 

RAPIER: Okay, do you think that you can have good mental health and bad mental health? 

RUHL: Oh, yes. 

RAPIER: Oh, yeah? 

RUHL: Yes. 

RAPIER: What would good mental health look like to you? 

RUHL: Well, may I make bible references in this? 

RAPIER: Go for it. 

RUHL: Okay, throughout the Bible it says that we should be sober-minded. And what that means is that we should be clear thinkers. So, anything that impairs my ability to think clearly would be detrimental to me. So, to have good mental health we need to be able to think clearly.  

RAPIER: Do you think that there are practices we can use to increase our mental health, make it better? 

RUHL: I hadn’t thought about it. In that way, I think being sociable. We are social creatures. I was told 50 years ago by a professor that the most important thing you can get out of college is the ability to communicate well with others. And I was just listening to a person talking about loneliness, we talked about how there’s a “loneliness epidemic” in this country. What he was saying was: loneliness is good because it tells us we need to go find someone to interact with, and I agree with that. Now, I think we need times to be apart, I think it can be very healthy, and I think that can also increase our mental health to have those times where all the chaos of the world isn’t pushing us and we can actually think. But, I also think that it is important for us to find times of healthy interactions. Let me give you an example from my occupation. We would take people out in the woods for 23 days at a time. One of the things we would do with them was a three-day solo. We would put them by themselves. That was before cellphones of any of that. They would have a journal, and a little bit of food and a tarp. They would spend three days. And none of them, of course, in our society had ever spent three days really alone. It was one of the first times for them to have to look into themselves and see what was going on. Their journals were very reflective, a lot of that. So, that was a time when being alone was very important. But, of course, they were anxious to get back to the group, and that’s important as well.  

RAPIER: I think in the new decade, even, then conversation about mental health has grown exponentially, like you said, you had never even thought of it before. Do you think that it’s important to have a discussion openly about mental health? Or do you think it’s something people should have to deal with themselves? 

RUHL: No, see, you had a couple questions so I’ll lead with the last one. I think that my generation, we interacted more with people.  

RAPIER: And you’re a millennial? 

RUHL: Well, I’ll tell you this: I’m 74. I don’t put labels on it. 

RAPIER: Whatever that means. 

RUHL: Yes, so I was raised in the fifties and sixties. We had a television, but if I was inside watching television, my mom would say, “Why don’t you go out inside,” it was a special ring for us to watch television. We had a landline in our house, which was a party line, and you’d never talk more than 5 minutes on the phone. The phone was in the main room, so everybody heard your conversations. So because of that, our communication was very different. If you wanted to see someone you would go to their house. We saw people face-to-face. We did a lot of things together. We spent a lot of time outdoors. I think as a result of that, just in general, we were living a way closer to the way I think we were designed to live. Out of doors, in community. And now if you became wealthy, you would say to me, ‘oh we’ve got a 4,000 square foot house, and each of my children has their own room, and they have their own phone, and they have their own car and they have their own… so what do they do? They come home, and they go to their room, and you don’t know who they’re talking to and you think that’s a good think somehow. But we’ve actually separated the family and isolated each other. When I was growing up, I’ve mentioned this once before, we had a cottage in Pennsylvania. No electricity. No indoor plumbing. We had one big round table that had a coal oil lamp right in the middle of it. If anybody had to do anything after dark they had to sit at that table. So we were all together. We would play games together, read books and all that. I think that’s what we are designed to do, and I think in situations like that, mental health is going to be much higher. I mean, it’s the being alone, it’s the comparing yourself to others, it’s not having the personal contact, but anyway, yes. Those are my thoughts. You got me opened up.  

RAPIER: That’s great I think that’s all I need.  

RUHL: Okay. 

RAPIER: Thank you so much. 

RUHL: Sure.