Every once in a while, I try to find information about how Gramma Gallson would have be treated within an Ontario mental health facility between 1929 and 1960. Needless to say, information is next to impossible to find.
The being said, I did find an interesting article about this topic for the UK, which I am imagining, before the Ontario Mental Health Act of 1930, was likely in place.
The Treatment Act of 1930 replaced the Lunacy Act 1890 which stipulated that anyone admitted had to be "certified" which required a magistrate's oversight - in other words, needed a warrant. Also, there was NO option for self-discharge.
My good friend Linda brought to my attention a limited series on Cary Grant that's available on Brit Box. She gave me a "trigger" warning, meaning to be prepared for something within the series that might trigger me emotionally. I watched it yesterday - "Archie" - a 4-episode series about the early life of Archibald Leach, born in Bristol, England, who's father committed his mother into an insane asylum in 1913, then told everyone she had died. Cary did not learn until he was 31 that his mother was still alive in the mental institution.
While there are some dramatized story lines in the series that are not factual, I wonder about the hospital conditions that Mrs. Leach lived. In the series, she was in a ward room with 6-8 other women, but they show her being treated with kindness and also show her as being VERY coherent and able to make lively and combative conversation, even after being in an asylum for 22 years.
Unfortunately, Gramma Gallson's story took a different path with Uncle Phill was told that his mother was "too far gone" and told not to even visit her.
Cary got his mother out of the hospital when he learned about her whereabouts and set her up in her own apartment in Bristol with a nurse and the help of his by-then half brother, as Cary's father "remarried" one year after Cary's mother was committed. Wikipedia says Cary's older brother died before Cary's was born of tuberculous meningitis two days before his first birthday, for which Cary's mother blamed herself bitterly and from then on, suffered from clinical depression.
I haven't been able to find further research into why women were institutionalized in the early 1900's in Ontario. But I have come across papers and research done in other countries. For instance, in Ireland, a paper was done on women being institutionalized during that time period.
https://nursingclio.org/2017/10/25/i-would-rather-have-my-own-mind-the-medicalization-of-womens-behavior-in-ireland-1914-1920/
I do think the key point here is advocacy - Gramma had no one advocating for her and only when Cary Grant became his mother's advocate, was she released.