Sexual Identity Therapy

Sexual identity therapy (SIT) is a framework intended to aid mental health practitioners in helping clients arrive at a healthy and personally acceptable resolution of sexual identity and value conflicts. It was created by Warren Throckmorton and Mark Yarhouse, professors at small conservative evangelical colleges, and has been endorsed by former American Psychological Association president Nick Cummings, psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, and Wheaton College provost Stanton Jones. The framework emphasizes how the client wants to live, identifies the client's core beliefs, and helps the client live according to those beliefs; its creators state their recommendations are not sexual reorientation therapy protocols in disguise but instead help clients pursue lives they value, and present the approach as an alternative to both sexual orientation change efforts and gay affirmative psychotherapy. Work on the framework began with the 2004 establishment of the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity, was first announced in 2007 and presented that year at the American Psychological Association convention, and was reviewed by its authors in 2008 in response to ongoing changes in the field; in 2009 the APA released a report stating the approach is ethical and may be beneficial for some clients.