Quality of life for patients detained in hospital.

The quality of life of detained patients has not received adequate attention despite the responsibilities placed on hospital staff and the special problems faced by these patients. Legal principles to ensure quality of life have not been formalised, and the acceptable standards that a patient can expect have not been tested in the UK courts. Contemporary models of ensuring quality are being imposed with increasing pressure on health care professionals, but high-quality management has sometimes lagged behind. This has led to a poor quality of life for certain patients. It is important for future research to overcome difficulties in developing objective measurements and set the appropriate standards of quality of life that detained patients should expect. This would provide a basis against which both appropriate standards of care and the necessary resource allocation could be measured.