Discussion
Mothers of children with disabilities bear the greatest bur-den of care, and have been found to experience higher levels of depression and anxiety compared with mothers of children with typical development (Barlow et al. 2006). Education is a professional role of the nurse. Novel and effective nursing education and support programs for families have an important function in coping with disabilities. Through psychosocial education and support programs, nurses play an important role in shifting the rehabilitation services from child-centered to family centered services. Our findings suggest that psychosocial nursing education pro-gram is effective in reducing the risk for depression and in increasing the perception of healthy family functioning for mothers who have children with intellectual disabilities (Tables 3 and 4).