Sexual Identity Therapy

Sexual identity therapy (SIT) is a framework to "aid mental health practitioners in helping people arrive at a healthy and personally acceptable resolution of sexual identity and value conflicts." It was invented by Warren Throckmorton and Mark Yarhouse, professors at small conservative evangelical colleges. It has been endorsed by former American Psychological Association president Nick Cummings, psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, and the provost of Wheaton College, Stanton Jones. Sexual identity therapy puts the emphasis on how the client wants to live, identifies the core beliefs and helps the client live according to those beliefs. The creators state that their recommendations "are not sexual reorientation therapy protocols in disguise," but that they "help clients pursue lives they value." They say clients "have high levels of satisfaction with this approach". It is presented as an alternative to both sexual orientation change efforts and gay affirmative psychotherapy.

Work for developing the framework began with the establishment of the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity in 2004. The announcement of the framework for Sexual Identity Therapy were first released on April 16, 2007. In June 2007, the guidelines were presented at the American Psychological Association convention in San Francisco. In 2008 the authors announced they were going to review the framework because of "continual changes that are occurring in the area of therapy for individuals experiencing same-sex attractions."