Objective. The assessment of a psychological profile and a level of social adaptation among patients with HIV infection in the penitentiary system.Materials and methods. Randomly selected HIV-infected prisoners (n=41) from Novosibirsk prisons have passed in-depth interviews and survey on several questionnaires, based on different methods (questionnaires on assessing some social and medical indicators, a questionnaire on the TOBOL system — a clinical testing method, aimed at diagnosing a type of

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... attitude to the disease. The test on 13 kinds of addiction by G. V. Lozova's system and the test on identifying locus-control by G. Potter method are also included in the questionnaire.Results and discussion. The survey results showed that it is characteristic for a significant proportion of the examined patients to have a risky sexual behaviour, posing a risk of infecting a partner with HIV. It was stated that most of the tested have the dominance of anosognosic and ergopathetic type of attitude to the disease; there is tendency in developing some forms of chemical and non-chemical addiction and diagnosed prevalence of internal locus of control.