The purpose of study is to investigate the effectiveness of community-based mental health program offered by psychiatric nurse specialists, which was developed for chronic psychiatric patients. The research design was a form of a primary experimental design. The subjects for this study were 40 persons including patients and their family members. The data were gathered from February 1, 1996 to June 30, 1997, and analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA. The result of the this study is as follows : Hypothesis 1 : "There will be a significant difference in the family support scores perceived by patient between before and after community based mental health program " was supported(df=2, F=9.33, p=.001). According to time goes on, the tendency of mean scores of family support scores perceived by patient increased significantly in the form linear. Hypothesis 2 : "There will be a significant difference in the family burden scores between before and after community-based mental health program" was supported(df=2, F=10.74, P=.0015). According to time goes on, the tendency of mean scores of family burden decreased significanly in the form of linear. According to the results of this study, it is revealed that community-based mental health program have a significant effects on increasing family support score perceived by patient and decreasing family burden with chronic psychiatric patients.