Experiencing a mastectomy is reconstructing an identity. Investigate the quality of life in women who had mastectomies without reconstruction of the breast is the aim of this work. Thus, we evaluated 30 women undergoing treatment at the outpatient chemotherapy, Santa Casa de Misericordia of Maceió (SCMM), aged between 30 and 68 years, using the following instruments: Interview Semi-directed; Social Readjustment Rating Scale, Anxiety Scale Depression (HADS) and Quality of Life Questionnaire SF-36. It was found that age, marital status, education, socioeconomic status, presence of depression and anxiety and the likelihood of illness showed a significant relevance with the index of quality of life below average (48.14) presented by the group studied. It was possible to conclude that the HADS can be used to indicate issues related to quality of life in this population, which may replace the SF-36 for brief results, as it demonstrated coincident effects in hospital practice.