I would be cautious about what people say in the survey on Stack Overflow. How many of those who claim to have ADHD or Autism have an actual diagnosis of those from a professional?
That works the other way too. You will also have a lot of people reporting they do not have ADHD or autism when they actually do.
What matters for those type of surveys is how many people report struggles. If someone struggle with attention but does not have the exact number of symptoms required for a formal diagnostic, they are still struggling.
ok, but the whole grand parent comment is a comparison to the global population. Those global statistics are not self reported, they're official diagnoses so will also be missing "people reporting they do not have ADHD or autism when they actually do".
That people struggle is an important statistic, but shouldn't immediately be counted as ADHD or autism. There can be other factors at play.
You are putting way too much trust into "professionals" here. Adult ADHD was essentially not a thing people believed was real a few years ago. Where I live there was no reimbursable stimulants for anyone over 18 until 10 years ago.
Now that people are catching on to the fact they're not actually lazy but just have a much higher barrier to starting and maintaining focus on things they're not extremely passionate about some doctors handle 5-10 new patients a day.
ADHD is not rare. At all. The super strict guidelines exist because people are afraid of Ritalin and they're extra afraid of giving it to children, so double up on your "this is not actually a real thing" hysteria.
What matters for those type of surveys is how many people report struggles. If someone struggle with attention but does not have the exact number of symptoms required for a formal diagnostic, they are still struggling.