Aggrey Burke

Aggrey Washington Burke FRCPsych (born 1943) is a British retired psychiatrist and academic, born in Jamaica, who spent the majority of his medical career at St George's Hospital in London, UK, specialising in transcultural psychiatry and writing literature on changing attitudes towards black people and mental health.

He has carried out extensive research on racism and mental illness and is 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.

Aggrey Burke was born in 1943 in Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica, where he had his early education.

His father was Revd Eddie Burke and his grandmother was Emily Watts, who ran a kindergarten.

He is one of six siblings, the eldest of which was Syd Burke, who became a renowned photographer and journalist.

In 1959, while still a teenager, Burke moved to Britain with his parents Edmund and Pansy, who had migrated there with three of their sons.

The family settled in Kew, west London, where Burke was schooled and, as the only Black Child in his class, experienced feelings of isolation.

Subsequently he gained admission to study medicine in 1962 at the University of Birmingham – one of a very few Caribbean students – where he was captain of athletics, and from where he graduated in 1968.

In 1968 Burke returned to Jamaica to complete his early clinical training.

That year, the political activist and academic Walter Rodney noted in his memoirs, that Burke was posted at the University Hospital, Mona, Jamaica.

After one year he moved to Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, as part of a psychiatry training programme.

In 1971, he was noted to be back at the University Hospital in Mona as a registrar and elected member of the Psychotherapy and Social Psychiatry Section.

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.

He wrote about suicide in Trinidad and authored the earliest epidemiological report on schizophrenia in the Caribbean.

One of his studies looked at venereal disease at the Bellevue Hospital, with particular concern for those people with previous inadequate treatment with penicillin.

In 1976, having returned to the UK, Burke published works on attempted suicide in immigrant Irish, West Indian and Asian people in Birmingham.

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.

He later became the first black British person to be appointed by the NHS as a consultant psychiatrist.

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.

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 has shown 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 says 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 1985, he was noted to be Britain's only "leading" black psychiatrist.

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".

It was followed by an enquiry by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and the publication of its report in 1988, which led to changes in admissions processes.

By 1988, there were two Caribbean psychiatrists in the NHS.

He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Burke's work has included writing on changing attitudes towards black people and mental health, research on the role of racial discrimination in psychiatric disorders, and how racism can lead to mental illness.

He later gave evidence in the early 1990s inquiry into the death of Orville Blackwood at Broadmoor Hospital.