Prediction of suicidal behaviour as a three-body problem

In physics, the three-body problem relates to predicting the trajectories of three (or more) interacting celestial masses based on their initial positions and velocities. 1 A general predictive model for these trajectories is intractable, as predictions are highly sensitive to initial conditions and any minor perturbations lead to wild inaccuracies – that is, the relationships of the orbits of the three bodies are chaotic. The related phenomenon of the butterfly effect indicates that as lead times for prediction increase, the initial conditions bear a diminishing relationship to the outcome. 2