Aggrey Burke

Aggrey Washington Burke FRCPsych (13 May 1943 – 21 December 2025) was a Jamaican-born British psychiatrist and academic, who spent the majority of his medical career at St George's Hospital in London, England, specialising in transcultural psychiatry and writing literature on changing attitudes towards black people and mental health. He carried out extensive research on racism and mental illness and was the first black consultant psychiatrist appointed by Britain's National Health Service (NHS).

During his early career, Burke conducted studies on the mental health of repatriates at Bellevue Hospital, Jamaica, and concluded that repatriation caused significant psychological harm. While in Jamaica, he authored the earliest epidemiological report on schizophrenia in the Caribbean. In 1976, having returned to the UK, Burke published works on attempted suicide in immigrant Irish, West Indian and Asian people in Birmingham. In the early 1980s, he carried out psychotherapeutic work with bereaved families following the fire at a house in New Cross in which 13 young black people died.

Burke's work throughout the 1980s demonstrated how deprivation is associated with mental illness in some black communities, and revealed prejudices that affect mental health care in these groups. He questioned the significant number in some locked secure hospital wards of young black males, many of whom he said require treatment rather than restraint, and he looked at the role of the families of black and Asian people with mental illness. He later gave evidence in the early 1990s inquiry into the death of Orville Blackwood at Broadmoor Hospital.

In 1986, together with Joe Collier, Burke wrote a "groundbreaking" paper for the journal Medical Education, which concluded that "racial and sexual discrimination operate when students are selected for medical education at London colleges". where he received his early education. His grandmother was Emily Watts, who ran a kindergarten, Aggrey was one of six siblings, the eldest being Syd Burke, who became a renowned photographer and journalist.

In 1959, while still a teenager, Burke moved to Britain with his parents, who had migrated there with three of their sons. His father Eddie, a senior civil servant, had been seconded to England to ease community tensions in the aftermath of the Notting Hill race riots. The family settled in Kew, west London, where Burke was schooled and, as the only black child in his class, experienced feelings of isolation. After one year, he moved to Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, as part of a psychiatry training programme.

During his time in Jamaica, Burke conducted studies on the mental health of repatriates at the psychiatric hospital Bellevue Hospital, noting that a significant number of admissions were repatriates from England. He reported that 20 per cent had been sent from the high-security psychiatric unit Broadmoor Hospital, the majority had not wished to return to Jamaica and most were diagnosed with paranoia, despite Burke noting that they lacked any delusions with regards to discrimination based on skin colour. He described the stigma of failed migration and the "feelings of persecution and negative behaviours" associated with repatriation as a specific psychological event, and as a result coined the term "repatriate syndrome". Burke calculated that one in four would die, and concluded that repatriation was a "gross social insult", caused significant psychological harm and had no therapeutic benefit. One study by Burke looked at venereal disease at the Bellevue Hospital, with particular concern for those people with previous inadequate treatment with penicillin.

Psychiatry and mental health in the UK

In 1976, having returned to the UK to complete his psychotherapy and psychiatry training as a research fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Birmingham, he wrote a series of papers on attempted suicide in immigrant Irish, West Indian and Asian people in Birmingham, comparing the rates to the local population and to that in the countries of origin of these groups. Subsequently, he presented his findings at the 6th World Congress of Social Psychiatry. In 1977, he was appointed senior lecturer in psychiatry at St George's Medical School in Tooting, London. By 1988, there were two Caribbean psychiatrists in the NHS. He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. research on the role of racial discrimination in psychiatric disorders, and how racism can lead to mental illness. At an oral history seminar in 1981, organised by Lambeth Community Relations Council, Burke stated: "If you are black, and working class, there are much greater chances of being compulsorily admitted to hospital under a section of the Mental Health Act, going to a special hospital and sometimes being repatriated." In April of that year, following the Brixton riots, he co-founded "The Ethnic Study Group", which dismissed diagnoses of "Balham psychosis, New Cross psychosis, West Indian psychosis and Migration psychosis".

His work showed how deprivation is associated with mental illness in some black communities, and revealed prejudices that affect mental health care in these groups. Later, he addressed the notion that psychiatric reports for courts show an "obsession with blacks being bad, big blacks somewhat worse, and big black males – particularly those that have had any contact with the police – as the most dangerous of all cases". He simultaneously questioned the significant number of young black males in some locked secure hospital wards, a number who he said require treatment rather than restraint, stating in one interview that "this is partly due to seeing blacks as dangerous. There is this mind-set that the black population is tricky, difficult to deal with. The Government has not attempted to understand the root issues which are poverty and deprivation."

In the early 1980s, Burke carried out psychotherapeutic work with bereaved families following the January 1981 New Cross house fire that killed 13 young black people on 18 January 1981, with one survivor committing suicide two years later. Burke also looked at the role of families of black and Asian people with mental illness, and advocated the importance of treatment within a family context. When treating West Indian people with mental illness, he used his familiarity with key Jamaican role models including Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley and the Rastafarian movement. In the same year, he demonstrated that African Americans who experienced racism also reported feelings of "intrusion and avoidance". In the 1980s, he coined the terms "under-reaction" and "over-reaction" to illustrate how services respond to some ethnic groups.

Medical school admissions In 1986, together with clinical pharmacologist Joe Collier, when both were senior lecturers at St George's, Burke wrote a "groundbreaking" paper for the journal Medical Education, entitled "Racial and sexual discrimination in the selection of students for London medical schools".

The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) was subsequently made aware that software used for medical-school admissions selection at St George's was creating a lower score for women and those with non-European names, so reducing their chance of being called for interview. Following an enquiry, the official CRE report (1988) confirmed Burke and Collier's findings and also questioned what might be happening in other London medical schools; St. George's already had a higher than average intake of students with non-European names.

1990s Prins inquiry

Burke gave evidence in the Herschel Prins-led inquiry into the death of Orville Blackwood at Broadmoor Hospital, published in 1994. In the Prins Inquiry, Burke suggested that Orville Blackwood "was a man with profound insight" and termed his illness as "acute stress-related psychotic disorder". He remained at St George's until his retirement, following which he continued with work in psychiatry, writing on black mental health issues and assisting the General Medical Council.

In April 2016, Burke looked back at some of his own work at a public meeting at London's Learie Constantine Centre (sponsored by Brent Patient Voice and Brent MIND) on the topic "Race and Mental Health: are black communities getting a fair deal?" and, in the context of race, ethnicity, class and trauma, reflected on the statistics that show that young black men may be five times more likely than young men from other groups to be diagnosed with severe schizophrenia. In light of his figures on the wide differences between the various Caribbean islanders, collectively referred to as Afro-Caribbean, he questioned this categorisation.

Other roles, awards and honours Burke's other roles have included being the president of the Transcultural Psychiatry Society (TCPS), which focused on issues of culture and race in British mental health services. In 1984, Burke chaired a symposium organised by the TCPS on the theme "Mental Health and Apartheid".

He was also appointed the vice-chair and a trustee of the George Padmore Institute, an archive, educational, research and information centre that was founded in 1991 by John La Rose together with a group of political and cultural activists connected to New Beacon Books. Burke became an active member of the International Association for Suicide Prevention and taught on suicide awareness programmes. In the same year, he was one of the seven recipients of the President's Medal from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, awarded at a virtual ceremony in November 2020.

On 6 April 2022, Burke delivered the annual Lord Pitt Memorial Lecture, organised by the British Caribbean Association and held at the UCL Institute of Education. In July 2022, St George's awarded Burke an honorary degree of Doctor of Science, for his work "as a pioneering campaigner against discrimination" as well as for his contribution to the field of psychiatry.

In 2023, he received The Weekly Gleaner Honour Award Certificate for Health and Wellness "for his years of extensive research on racism and mental illness".

In 2024, Burke was awarded the honorary degree Doctor of Medicine from the University of Birmingham.

Personal life Burke's eldest brother was the pioneering photographer, broadcaster and journalist Syd Burke (1938–2010). Named in his honour, the Aggrey Burke Fellowship was launched in 2023 by the Royal College of Psychiatrists as part of their Equality Action Plan "to encourage and support Black medical students to pursue a career in psychiatry".

Book chapters

(Joint author with Dennis Bovell, Althea McNish, Gus John, Wilfred Wood, Yvonne Brewster, Alexis Rennie)