Aggrey Burke
Aggrey Burke | |
|---|---|
Burke, Osler Club of London, Royal College of Physicians, London (2022) | |
| Born | Aggrey Washington Burke 13 May 1943 Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica |
| Died | 21 December 2025 (aged 82) London, England |
| Education | University of Birmingham University of the West Indies |
| Occupation | Psychiatrist |
| Known for | Psychotherapeutic work with bereaved families following the fire at a house in New Cross (1981) Medical School Admissions report (1988) |
| Relatives | Syd Burke (brother) |
| Medical career | |
| Profession | Physician |
| Field | Transcultural psychiatry |
| Institutions | |
| Sub-specialties | Transcultural psychiatry |
| Research | |
| Notable works | "Racial and Sexual Discrimination in the Selection of Students for London Medical Schools" (1986) |
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". 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.