1. Aggrey Washington Burke FRCPsych was born on 1943 and 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.
Aggrey Burke has carried out extensive research on racism and mental illness and is the first black consultant psychiatrist appointed by Britain's National Health Service.
In 1976, having returned to the UK, Aggrey Burke published works on attempted suicide in immigrant Irish, West Indian and Asian people in Birmingham.
Aggrey Burke 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.
Aggrey Burke later gave evidence in the early 1990s inquiry into the death of Orville Blackwood at Broadmoor Hospital.
Aggrey Burke was born in 1943 in Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica, where he had his early education.
Aggrey Burke's father was Revd Eddie Burke and his grandmother was Emily Watts, who ran a kindergarten.
Aggrey Burke 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, Aggrey 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 Aggrey Burke was schooled and, as the only black child in his class, experienced feelings of isolation.
In 1968 Aggrey Burke returned to Jamaica to complete his early clinical training.
That year, the political activist and academic Walter Rodney noted in his memoirs, that Aggrey Burke was posted at the University Hospital, Mona, Jamaica.
Aggrey Burke 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.
Aggrey Burke wrote about suicide in Trinidad and authored the earliest epidemiological report on schizophrenia in the Caribbean.
Aggrey Burke later became the first black British person to be appointed by the NHS as a consultant psychiatrist.
Aggrey Burke is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Aggrey 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.
Aggrey Burke's 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.
Aggrey Burke has looked at the role of families of black and Asian people with mental illness, and advocated the importance of treatment within a family context.
Aggrey Burke wrote on the limitations of one-to-one counselling in Afro-Caribbean people with mental illness when a significant contributory factor to their condition was family stress, and that a positive outcome was strongly influenced by the family-patient interaction.
Aggrey Burke gave evidence in the Herschel Prins-led inquiry into the death of Orville Blackwood at Broadmoor Hospital, published in 1994.
Unlike others of his experience Aggrey Burke never received a professorship.
Aggrey Burke remained at St George's until his retirement, following which he continues with work in psychiatry, writing on black mental health issues and assisting the General Medical Council.
Aggrey Burke continues to speak and lecture in the UK and abroad.
In 1984 Aggrey Burke chaired a symposium organised by the TCPS on the theme "Mental Health and Apartheid".
Aggrey Burke was 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.
Aggrey Burke became an active member of the International Association for Suicide Prevention and teaches on suicide awareness programmes.
On 6 April 2022, Aggrey Burke delivered the annual Lord Pitt Memorial Lecture, organised by the British Caribbean Association and held at the UCL Institute of Education.