Yes, I can imagine there being huge differences between the US and Europe and I understand @MyStateKilledMe and other user's position after having negative experiences with therapists. And, with all due respect to Americans and I don't want to start a political debate about it here, the health care system in the US is just fucked up and I can certainly believe there are many therapists over there trying to keep you in treatment as long as possible just for the $$$, instead of helping you.
Where I live, Belgium, is known as having horrible mental health care. Our physical health care system is great, probably top of the world, but if it comes for mental issues, we are one of the worst. We have the highest suicide rate of Europe and politicians aren't doing shit about it. The Dutch (as in: Netherlands) suicide hotline offers free online sessions with a psychologist. They accepted me, knowing I was Belgian and they had the right to refuse me, because they know how crap the Belgian system is, so they decided to accept Belgians. Not saying these therapy sessions were extremely useful, but at least they were offered for free.
In Belgium, psychiatrists are covered by the national health care insurance so you pay about €12 per session or about €3 if you have a low income. Psychologists however, are not covered, so you have to pay them full price. This results in decent psychologists only being accessable for middle/upper class people. Mine charges €65 for a 45 minutes session, but he's clearly not doing it to make as much money as possible and is actually giving useful advice. Much better than most of the psychiatrists I've met in my life.
My main point: we all have our own experiences with therapists and I'm convinced most of us (mostly) have negative experiences. So do I. What some psychiatrists did to me in the past, man, I get fucking pissed just thinking about it. But therapy is an option for many people and if someone, like OP, feels like talking to therapists does help (obviously he felt betrayed because of the SN thing, but he clearly had a good relationship with him before), we should not discourage people from going to therapy by making comments like "therapists are cops" , "therapists are trained not to help you", "the rapists".
Let's everyone make his own descision about therapy on this forum, as that's what pro-choice means, but let's not discourage users from seeing therapists just because our own experiences with them are bad or even horrible.