The problem is, the people ordering these kits may be experiencing major depression or another treatable mental illness. Even chronic pain is treatable in most cases and many people with chronic pain benefit from psychological intervention. People who kill themselves due to these things are acting on impulses fueled by depressed or distressed cognitions. A part of them is choosing to die, but what these people usually want - REALLY want - is MORE life not less. We ALL might think about killing ourselves when things get too tough but people who don't have the coping skills or social resources actually go through with it. They can be helped in the overwhelming majority of cases. Helping people to commit suicide is not the answer.

I agree that parents can spend too much on their children. But the effect of nurture on behaviour is far from minimal. As Jessss said, this man's views go against scientific consensus. He has cited one research paper - that vocabulary normalises by age 12, to support a claim that is not supported by the majority of data. The effects of having a large vocabulary may have disappeared by age 12, but what about age 13? 14? Do we have the longitudinal data to determine the nature of this relationship? What about learning that has nothing to do with words? Does that normalise by age 12? Finally, does the data support the idea that parents undergoing attachment therapy are wasting their time? Or is this an emotional response - an opinion unsupported by data? Most families who take part in attachment therapy are referred to this therapy due to objective observation of a poor relationship between mother and child. There is a clear link between positive parenting, the parental relationship and a decrease in child behavioural problems. As another commenter inferred, "holding your child non-stop" is generally not part of attachment therapy - does Caplan know this? Is he exaggerating for sensational effect?

Clearly we just have a snippet of a larger article here, but based on this summary I would wonder whether Caplan is commenting on something that is outside of his area of expertise.