Private public posts

Found my own solution after bit of a trial and error. Had to add this ‘post_status’ => ‘publish’,

//user post count
	public function get_user_posts_count($user_ID){
		$args = array('author' => $user_ID, <strong>'post_status' => 'publish', </strong>'posts_per_page' => -1);
		$the_query = new WP_Query( $args );
		if ($the_query->post_count > 0){
			return $the_query->post_count;
		}
		else{
			return 0;
		}
	}