Thank you Abdelrahman Ibrahim Abushouk. I was indeed aiming to publish in a national journal because I'd like to evidence the lack of research in this particular topic. I will keep in mind your recommendation to make it on international literature.

Best wishes.

Why not include the international literature, contrast it with the lack of studies in your own country and then speculate as to the cause of the discrepancy. I am sure the reasons will turn out to be very interesting.

In addition to Mary V. Seeman's answer, are you able to find literature on this topic focussed on countries in your region/ or countries which share important features with your country? If you are going to speculate about the lack of studies in your country it would be interesting what studies have been conducted in ' similar' countries , or what they discussed about this topic in relation to the country of interest.

Thanks for your input, Mary V. Seeman. Including international literature in the systematic review wasn't my initial objective. But you're right, it might as well be a more valuable research.

Thanks to you too, Daan Bijdevaate. Yes, I've found some research in my region and I'm surely discussing it in relation to my country.

As for now, I went through the 6 databases and as expected I didn't find anything relevant. Nevertheless, I found a thesis which fits my inclusion criteria. Only problem is that I got it through a acquaintance (researcher at a local psychiatric hospital) and it hasn't been published. Not sure if I should include it at all or not, since I have not been able to contact the author. And even still, it's just one.

Your inclusion/exclusion criteria may be too strict, consider reviewing the criteria again, possibly with a librarian. If this is not the case---you may be in a highly novel area. So you may need to consider qualitative work. Happy to chat!

There is a paper named failure to induce aggression in ….mice. It is possible to write a paper named "Failure to reveal sexuality in people with mental illnesses in a certain region".

In addition to the other comments, I would add the following reflections.

The question is not if a systematic review can have "no findings" but "no studies", because the fact that you did not identify any study is a finding itself.

The strenght of a systematic review is based on the rigorous and systematic process of search and studies' selection: if you had clear and predefined inclusion criteria, and you searched sistematically in the appropriate databases, you can say that no studies are available under these criteria.

If the topic is an important one, it might be relevant to point this out, and, as some others already said, there are Cochrane reviews with no included studies which show the lack of evidence in the field and claim for studies.

In this view, the aim of a publication could not be to discuss the results, but to highlight the lack of evidence.

And I agree that it might be worthile to expand your search to studies conducted at an international level; this might be just to show that such studies exist, and the topic is in other countries relevant and covered; or even considering their results, and use them as the best available ones while waiting for specific studies conducted in your country.

Good luck with your research!