While Asians are becoming the largest ethnic group in the United States, studies have focused on Asians as a single population. This study explores the racial and ethnic mental health differences between non-Hispanic whites and Asians, with an emphasis on understudied subgroups, from the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) 2011-2012.

Findings: In this dataset, Asians had significantly lower adjusted odds ratios for both mental distress and serious mental illness. However, when Asians were divided into subgroups and compared to whites, Vietnamese and Japanese subgroups were significantly lower than whites for mental distress while Koreans were significantly higher. Vietnamese and Chinese were found to have significantly less serious mental illness than whites in the subgroup analyses.

Results underscore the importance of recognizing that Asian subgroups should not be overlooked, and all Asians should not automatically be treated as a homogenous group.