Rob Gordon, who is an expert in disasters and trauma including the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires, told the COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry on Friday about potential psychosocial stressors and how to reduce them.

Dr Gordon said at least 20 per cent of people would be seriously challenged by isolation due to the significant disruption to their social structure.

“The requirement to quarantine away from one’s loved ones and out of one’s normal patterns and connections is thus directly opposed to the normal instinctive reaction to find and rejoin loved ones in a time of crisis,” he said in his statement.

“It also deprives people of the social structures that would ordinarily help them deal with that crisis.”

Dr Gordon said he expected a person detained in hotel quarantine to perceive three key threats – illness, isolation and lifestyle disruption.

“The threat of isolation brings with it the loss of the ordinary, spontaneous social interactions, which provide a continuous flow of social information about the self,” he said.

“If the neighbour who says hello, the workmate who asks for advice and the barista at the coffee shop are all pleasant, that conveys to the person a sense of being a good person whom others appreciate.

“When this flow of feedback about the self is suddenly taken away, it can be very upsetting for some people.

“People with a strong internalised sense of their identity can manage … but people with a less well-formed internal identity depend on those social interactions to maintain their sense of being valued.”

Dr Gordon said stress could be reduced if people had a supportive environment, a sense of community support among those in quarantine, regular communication and opportunities for people to give feedback about their needs.

He said it was likely most returning travellers would experience several distinct emotional phases during their 14 days of hotel quarantine.

“The first half of the second week (was likely) to be people’s lowest point before their mood began to improve as they got closer to reaching their day of release,” he said.

The inquiry will resume next week.