A useful article to help guide clinical practice related to a relatively common problem.

A very thorough guideline that is a great resource to clinicians, primarily those in primary care practice. The flowcharts and recommendations regarding specific population groups are quite helpful.

A large patient population use benzodiazepines (BZDs) and this multi-institutional clinical guideline will help providers formulate appropriate plans to taper BZDs in patients at risk for adverse effects.

A very important guideline, both for the topic and because it's a joint effort by multiple medical societies. Transparent about evidence gaps and where clinical experience drives recommendations. It's most important lesson is that tapering must be done slowly, with frequent check-ins for signs of withdrawal or recurrence of original symptoms. This offers a useful approach to evaluating risk of withdrawal, but also rightly emphasizes that withdrawal can be hard to predict and can occur even after short periods of low doses. This is an under-appreciated but critical concept. In my experience, the internist says "let's lower your dose to X and return to see me in two weeks," while the experienced psychiatrist or addiction specialist says instead, "let's lower your dose to X, and I want to check in with you in two days to see how you're doing and we'll go from there." These are meaningfully different approaches from which we as internists can learn.