From the Jane Brody article:

As he recalls in “Orchestrating Change,” an inspiring new documentary about his work with musicians living with mental illness, he realized as a young boy that something inside him was not right. “I would get very excited and then very, very sad,” he said. But not until age 30, when a crippling emotional crisis led to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, did he know what his problem was.

“It was a very dark time, and I had no one to help me,” Mr. Braunstein said of the period following his diagnosis. “Everyone in the business abandoned me.” Yet he was determined to conduct, and eventually was hired by Caroline Whiddon, then executive director of an orchestra in Burlington, Vt., whose own career as a French horn player had been sidelined by disabling panic attacks, anxiety and depression.

Despite medication for bipolar disorder, Mr. Braunstein didn’t last a year on the job before he again unraveled emotionally. Once stabilized medically, he proposed that instead of being judged and discriminated against, he form his own orchestra where he could be himself and recruit people like him, said Ms. Whiddon, who by then had become his wife. Together, they created a performance vehicle — the Me2/Orchestra he instructs and conducts — that provides unstinting support and a new lease on life for mentally ill young men and women who play instruments. Several participants have been able to move on to more conventional careers in music.

“I never knew an orchestra could be such a vehicle for change,” Ms. Whiddon said.