The health of family carers may affect not only their own lives but also the lives of the people for whom they provide care. This article describes how the caring role can affect the health and well-being of a carer of a person who has a mental or physical disorder. Suggestions are made about how to recognise and ameliorate some of the detrimental effects of the caring role on the carer's own health.

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cw power conversion efficiencies of 57% have been obtained on uncoated diode lasers emitting nearly 300 mW per facet. This performance is achieved by using a low-resistance graded index separate confinement single quantum well AlGaAs/GaAs structure with high (84%) differential quantum efficiency and low threshold current.

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We report the first use of chemically assisted ion beam etching to form laser mirrors on GaAlAs graded index separate confinement single quantum well heterostructures grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. Over 80 mW cw optical power is obtained from the etched facet of uncoated 300-μm-long, etched/cleaved 60 μm stripe devices mounted p side up, and catastrophic failure occurs at a cw power as high as 205 mW. Differential quantum efficiencies for light emitted from the etched facet are 32% pulsed (27% cw) and the threshold current is 145 mA pulsed (150 mA cw).

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