A study of quality of life in 153 patients with a primary episode of bipolar aff ective disorder found a signifi cantly lower quality of life score in women in individual areas and in general, these diff erences were most pronounced in manic and depressive variant of primary episode of bipolar aff ective disorder. The clinical variant of primary episode of BD had a decisive influence on the self-esteem of quality of life in patients: patients with the depressive variant had low quality of life indicators, with manic — high, and with mixed — medium ones. When comparing quality of life self-assessment data, a tendency was found for the quality of life to decrease in all key areas in the depressive variant, and a tendency for overestimation — in the manic one. In the mixed version, the self-esteem indicators of quality of life did not have significant differences from the qualifi cation score by a specialist psychiatrist. The identifi ed patterns should be taken into account when determining treatment and rehabilitation measures.