Standardized instruments were used to assess self-esteem, job satisfaction and burnout of the subjects of either group. To measure self esteem of both the groups of nurses (psychiatric nurses (study group) and general nurses (control group)) the well-accepted Morris Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale was used. Another widely accepted tool, Paul E. Spector’s Job Satisfaction Survey Scale was used to measure the job satisfaction among both the groups of nurses. Spector’s Job Satisfaction Survey Scale (JSS) has some added advantages over other instruments used for such studies, for example, ‘Index of Work Satisfaction (IWS)’ (Burnard et al. 1999). Spector’s Job Satisfaction Survey Scale is a combination of nine components—payment, promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, contingent rewards, operating conditions, co-workers, nature of work and communication, and covers wider areas of the occupational repertoire than the IWS (Burnard et al. 1999). The JSS is a multidimensional instrument that was originally developed for measuring the job satisfaction level of the professionals and staffs engaged in social service sector. But Spector (1985) later mentioned that this scale can also be used in other sectors. The range of test–retest score of the JSS was 0.80–0.64 and the convergent validity was 0.76 (Van Saane et al. 2003). Recently Fesharaki et al. (2012) validated this scale on 301 military health care workers in Iran. At the end of the study they enumerated the reliability of the questionnaire as 0.86 in Cronbach’s Alpha (a). They concluded that the JSS is a valid and reliable questionnaire for measuring job satisfaction among military health care workers.