Magnesium muriaticum Case
A woman of 20 is very gloomy. She can not bring herself to do anything, she feels tired very quickly. She experiences life as rather pointless. She has been like this for one and a half years, since she ended the relationship with her boyfriend. She does not really know why she finished the relationship, but she felt suffocated and felt he demanded too much of her.
Two years ago her father died. She had a love-hate relationship with him. Her parents divorced when she was 5 years old. From the age of 12 to 16 she did not want to see her father anymore. She had the feeling that her father saw her as the daughter of his ex-wife and not as an individual person. He thought she had affected mannerisms, like her mother.
Her mother has severe mental problems and regularly has to spend some time in a psychiatric hospital. This 'schizophrenia' started when the daughter was 1 year old. The father could not tolerate the mother's behaviour and ended the marriage. He was gone with no notice.
Two years ago the woman was very concerned about the idea of schizophrenia, afraid that it might be hereditary. Everything revolved around her mother at that time, and that is when her depressive feelings first started.
She has various complaints:
Back- and neck pains. Vertigo with a feeling of fainting and a light feeling in her head. Nausea when she gets worked up about something. She also has spells of restlessness: she has to do something then.
General characteristics:
Temperature: she suffers from cold feet; headache < sun. > rain(2), > sea(2).
she cannot tolerate heat (2), it makes her very tired.
Perspiration: little.
Time: < morning, remains moody for 2 hours, deep inside she says 'no'.
Desires: spicy (3), chocolate (2), salt (2), tobacco (3), alcohol.
Aversion: thyme (3), fish, coffee (2).
nausea after coffee; gloomy after smoking and alcohol.
Menses she often has stomach cramps and pain in her calves.
the day before the menses she is bad tempered and starts cleaning the house.
Sleep: unrefreshed; she sleeps on her stomach.
Mind: She has a lot of will power and when she wants something she achieves it. But she often does not know what she wants. There is always something that gets her out of balance.
She is easily irritated, but usually keeps this to herself. She is irritated when people are being difficult, when people are coming too close, and when she has to talk for ages to explain something to someone. What irritates her the most is that her mother only ever talks about her own world and her own problems.
She is afraid that something terrible will happen to her, that she will go mad. Two years ago she took 'ecstacy' once and realised that it is very easy to go mad.
Too much attention can suddenly make her panic. In the morning she is always bad tempered.
Dreams: about dying, corpses and water. As a child she often dreamt of a corpse that was floating in water. She recently had a dream that she was in a cellar where the water was rising, and she couldn’t get out.
During the consultation she appears reserved and rather bad tempered. She gives you the feeling that she does not like talking about herself. She is good at learning things. Photography is her hobby. Work: she is studying, but she is going to stop soon, as she feels she has come to a dead end.
Analysis
As she is the child of divorced parents, the first choice, in my experience, is Magnesium muriaticum. But the theme of Magnesium muriaticum is also present in other aspects. There is the strong irritation towards her mother, who isn’t a real mother to her, who doesn’t give her the love and affection that a child expects of a mother. The problems with her father and boyfriend seem to be of secondary importance, more related to her main problem with her mother. We also find other Magnesium muriaticum symptoms in this case: < morning, > sea, desire for salt, aversion to fish, dreams about water.
Reaction
The depression gradually disappeared after Magnesium muriaticum 1 M. A year later she started her studies again, in a new subject and with great enjoyment. Other remedies which helped her later on were Nat-f. (see chapter on Nat-f) and Graphites.