Benzodiazepine withdrawal catatonia: Two cases from a tertiary care center in Eastern India

Catatonia is a diagnostic entity of a neuropsychiatric cluster of symptoms that can occur in a number of different psychiatric, neurologic, and metabolic disorders. Benzodiazepines remain the mainstay of the treatment of catatonia through their possible effect on the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptor modulation in the central nervous system (CNS). Rarely, patients have been seen to manifest catatonic symptoms when they face sudden withdrawal from long-term benzodiazepine treatment. Here, we have presented two such cases of different clinical profiles where following benzodiazepine withdrawal, sudden catatonic symptoms emerged that responded quickly on re-administration of benzodiazepines.