How long do you continue benzodiazepines in patients who have recovered from catatonia?

As others have already responded, it is case-dependent. In an otherwise healthy patient whose underlying medical or psychiatric condition causing catatonia had stabilized, there is likely a way to gradually taper off benzodiazepines without a risk of relapse.

However there are other cases that are more treatment-resistant and where the risk of relapse is very high or where I'd say relapse is a guaranteed certainty. These are patients that had already relapsed with the taper or discontinuation of ...

This really is patient-dependent (as everything is in psychiatry). I have a patient currently who I have tried and tapered off over a year, but when I recently finally got him off completely, he started to become manic and catatonic again. I had him on an equivalent of 24 mg of Ativan in inpatient and was able to get him to 10 mg before discharging him, and because he was such a complex case, I kept him to follow him outpatient, and it has been a challenge to get him completely off Ativan. I thi...

I primarily work in the inpatient setting, so I typically assume I will send lysed patients home with the lowest-effective-dose of BZDs and adjuncts, tapered over time. I like to see stability at home and handoff to outpatient providers to very carefully continue tapering only if the patient remains stable. In the hospital, I typically taper lorazepam by no more than 0.5 mg/day total, if that, depending on how high we're starting. Adjuncts and ECT should be used in the service of reducing the re...