A precaution intended to prevent suicides at the state mental hospital now requires resident checks every 15 minutes — even throughout the night — prompting complaints from the patient inmates that they are being deprived of needed sleep.

“They wake you up to make sure you’re breathing,” said patient Gary Hilton. “It’s cruel and unusual punishment.”

Hilton said every 15 minutes through the night a hospital staff member opens the door, creeps over to the bed and looks to see whether the patient is breathing.

Liz McDonough, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Human Services, confirmed that all 185 criminally insane patients in the forensic units at the Colorado Mental Health Institute of Pueblo must now be checked through the night. However, staff make every attempt to avoid waking patients, she said.

“Yes we are doing 15-minute accountability checks,” McDonough said. “It is a suicide-prevention tool.”

She said the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which licenses the hospital, first required staff to view the patients by looking through a window into rooms after patient Sergio Taylor, 23, killed himself last year.

Three months ago, after Edward Benge, 49, killed himself in his room, the state health department began requiring the more “robust” checks, including entering each room and closely viewing the patient.

Hilton said that if staff can’t tell whether a patient is breathing in the dark, they will turn on the lights in a patient’s room.

It happens all through the night, he said. It’s difficult to get to sleep knowing a staff member is going to enter the room every 15 minutes. Once awakened it’s tough to go back to sleep, and it’s impossible to get into a deep sleep, he said.

“They come in and stand over you,” Hilton said. “You’re tired. You’re worn out all the time. It’s terrible.”

McDonough acknowledged that staff members have received complaints from patients about being awakened and have worked with them to avoid disruption.

For example, they have asked some patients to leave their doors cracked open so that staff can slip inside without being heard. The checks are mandatory, though.

“They have to be able to ascertain that the individual is breathing,” McDonough said. “It will last until we have an agreement with the health department that we can do things in a different way.”

A recent independent review found that hospital patients have lost hope partly because the hospital drastically curtailed programming for patients because of staff shortages linked to budget shortfalls.

Pueblo District Attorney Bill Thiebaut said a grand jury has been convened to review several recent hospital deaths to determine whether staff were criminally culpable.

Besides the deaths of Benge and Taylor, Troy Allen Geske, 41, died Aug. 10 while in restraint and Joshua Garcia, 21, died Oct. 8, 2007, after being overmedicated. The hospital settled a lawsuit by Garcia’s family for $223,202.

Thiebaut said Wednesday that he could not comment specifically about individual cases. But he said his office reviews whether staff follow policy when someone dies in jail or at the hospital during their watch.

In one case, the grand jury is reviewing whether a patient died of positional asphyxiation.

The independent review completed last month recommended the hospital reduce physical restraints and seclusions by half.

“The entire hospital is on suicide watch,” one of the inspectors was quoted as saying in the report. “Staff members appear anxious, significantly heightening patient stress levels.”

Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com